
GojpghtN?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



FAITH IN A 
FUTURE LIFE 



Books by the Same Author 
Faith in a Future Life 

(Foundations) 

Great Religious Teachers of the East 
The Life of Jesus 

In the Light of the Higher Criticism 

The Dawn of Christiaaity 

(Sequel to the preceding) 

Ideals of Life 

From the Bibles of the Great Religions. 



FAITH IN A 
FUTURE LIFE 

(FOUNDATIONS) 



BY 

ALFRED W. MARTIN 

AUTHOR OP "GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OP THE EAST, 

"THE LIFE OP JESUS IN THE LIGHT OF THE HIGHER 

CRITICISM," "THE DAWN OP CHRISTIANITY," ETC. 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 

1916 






Copyright, 1916, bt 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



1'^ 



•4 1916 

Printed in the United States of America 



'CI.A445486 



> 



PREFATORY NOTE 

On the Sunday evenings of the winter months in 
1915, at the Meeting House of the Society for Ethical 
Culture of New York, I gave a series of eight lectures 
on Modern Occultism. The course included the fol- 
lowing subjects : Modern Occultism and the Ethical 
Attitude Toward It, The Causes of Modern Occultism, 
Spiritualism and Its Cardinal Claim, Psychical Re- 
search and Its Results, Foundations for the Faith in 
a Future Life, Theosophy and Reincarnation, Chris- 
tian Science in Its Relation to Jesus as Healer, A 
Candid Examination of Christian Science. 

Only in its generic sense, as defined in the Century 
Dictionary, was the word "occultism" used. The 
aim of the course was expository, critical, construc- 
tive. It sought to sketch the origin and development 
of each of these modern movements, to set forth its 
distinctive characteristics, to indicate its contribution 
to religious thought, to show in what respects its main 
position seemed open to criticism. 

This book is not a reproduction of those lectures. 
They were delivered without manuscript and the 
thought of extending my notes for publication was at 
no time entertained. But the receipt of several hun- 
dred signed applications for a book that should con- 

V 



PREFATORY NOTE 

tain at least a portion of the course, particularly what 
had been said on the subject of immortality and the 
various grounds on which thinkers have supported 
their faith in it, prompted the preparation of what 
is herein presented. 

Be it understood, then, that the following chapters 
reproduce, not the original lectures but only the sub- 
stance of certain parts of six in the series. It seemed 
necessary to say these preliminary words lest any of 
those who formed part of my friendly audience 
should expect to find here verbal reproduction of 
what they then heard. 

Alfred W. Martin. 

New York. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction ix 

I. Three Minor Foundations 1 

II. The Christian Foundation 17 

III. The Thesis of Materialism 31 

IV. The Ethical Attitude Toward Modern 

Occultism — Spiritualism, Pyschical Re- 
search, Theosophy 51 

V. The Cardinal Claim of Spiritualism . . 65 

VI. The Counterclaim of Psychical Research 81 

VII. The Theosophical Belief, Reincarnation 112 

VIII. The Foundation in Moral Experience . . 144 

IX. Misuses of the Faith in a Future Life . . 170 

X. The Moral Life in the Light of Immortality 194 



INTRODUCTION 

The visitor at Versailles, strolling in the 
royal forest, is certain to note the manner in 
which its paths have been laid out. Like the 
rays of a star they extend in every direction and 
all converge npon a large open space, a "place 
de Vetoile." One may enter the forest on any 
of these paths, people may be walking in op- 
posite directions, but from whatever direction 
they come, they all meet at last in this central 
open place. In the forest of human speculation 
the faith in a future life is such a place. 
Thinkers of every grade and shade, of every 
clime and time, have traveled one or another of 
the thought-paths which converge upon that 
central spot of spiritual sunshine — the faith in 
a life beyond death. 

I propose in this course of lectures to traverse 
the more important of these thought-paths in 
order to determine whether any of them can 
still be trusted to conduct us to the desired goal, 
or whether, as a result of recent research, sci- 
entific discovery, and historical criticism, they 

ix 



INTRODUCTION 

have been converted from thoroughfares to 
culs-de-sac. 

There are those who have arrived at the be- 
lief in personal immortality through intellec- 
tual speculation; those who have reached the 
faith at a single bound by intuition ; those who 
have accepted it directly from the New Testa- 
ment; those who, by one or another form of 
psychic experience, have attained the belief. 
Then again, there are those who have gotten it 
as the result of moral experience. 

Approaching the subject from a standpoint 
that is independent, free, nonsectarian, let us 
examine these various foundations on which the 
faith in a future life has been built; let us ask 
of each, does it actually give the support that 
has been claimed for it, does it satisfy both the 
head and the heart, does it meet the test to 
which candid, impartial truth-seeking puts it? 

Permit me, before proceeding, to register my 
abhorrence of dogmatism in dealing with this 
question of immortality. Dogmatism may be 
denned as affirmation without valid evidence, 
assertion without reasons. A dogma is a propo- 
sition pronounced true on the basis of some 
authority too sacred to be interrogated — an un- 
debatable proposition. The dogmatist is one 



INTBODUCTION 

who says that no question can be opened which 
the Bible has closed — as though any question 
could ever be closed as long as anyone is com- 
petent to reopen it. The dogmatist is one who 
holds that certain beliefs are too sacred to be 
questioned — as though the very sanctity of a 
belief did not depend, in part at least, upon its 
verification. Dogmatism sometimes takes the 
form of foreclosing further investigation, as 
when Professor MtLnsterberg said of the al- 
leged facts of Spiritism, " They do not exist 
and never can exist." 1 

Nor, again, am I a whit less strongly opposed 
to sentimentalism than to dogmatism. I, for 
one, am utterly unwilling to satisfy my heart 
at the expense of my head, to sacrifice reason 
for the sake of faith, albeit that I recognize the 
place where knowledge fails and faith holds 
sway. If the temple of the immortal hope be 
not spacious enough to hold both my head and 
my heart, I shall stay outside and wait for more 
satisfying evidence of what I devoutly hope is 
true. Dear as is the word immortality to me, 
there is one word dearer still — truth. Deep as 
is my desire for personal survival of death, my 
desire not to be deceived, not to be fooled, is 

1 Miinsterberg : "Psychology and Life/' p. 253. 
xi 



INTRODUCTION 

deeper still. There are those, I know, who have 
grown so to love the beliefs taught them in child- 
hood, "at mother's knee," that they prefer to 
hold to them even though they were proved 
erroneous. But parents are never honored or 
revered by such deliberate indifference to dis- 
covered truth. ' ' Why should disillusionment, ' ' 
asks Maeterlinck, "distress you if you are a 
man of honest intention? Disillusions we treat 
with scant justice yet they are really the first 
smiles of truth. The more disillusions fall at 
your feet the more surely and nobly will the 
great reality shine on you." Surely the deep- 
est passion of the soul must be to know the 
truth, whatever it may be, and then calmly, loy- 
ally to adjust oneself to it. The prayer of Ajax 
was for light; there can be no nobler prayer. 
It will be well if, at the outset, a word be said 
by way of defining the principal terms of our 
subject — immortality, foundation, faith, soul. 

By "immortality" we mean personal, con- 
scious survival of death, conscious of our iden- 
tity with our present earthly life ; for, with- 
out memory immortality would have no more 
practical significance for us than belief in the 
persistence and indestructibility of matter. In 
other words, we mean by immortality more than 

xii 



INTRODUCTION 

the mere generality, entertained by McTag- 
gart and Bradley, following Hegel, that "no 
spiritual energy is ever lost" but is "sustained 
regardless of the persistence of personality.' ' 
Without that persistence, immortality, as we 
shall use the word, would be meaningless. 

To have a strong, stable, enduring founda- 
tion for one's faith is a matter of fundamental 
concern. Anyone can believe in immortality. 
In mere belief there is no virtue. Yet we some- 
times hear it said that it is a disgrace not to be- 
lieve in immortality. We all have known pious 
persons who, with a pained expression, have 
remarked of certain free-thinkers, "How shock- 
ing that they do not believe in a future life." 
But their avowed agnosticism may have much 
more merit than the unquestioning acceptance 
of inherited belief. The ultimate point of im- 
portance is on what ground do you believe or 
disbelieve and in what vital relation does your 
creed or your skepticism stand to your daily 
life? Apart from these considerations the be- 
lief and denial are alike of no genuine worth. 
Before we can ascribe any value to another's be- 
lief in immortality we must needs know the 
foundation on which it rests, "the reason for 
the faith that is in him." Transcendent im- 

xiii 



INTRODUCTION 

portance therefore attaches to the basis of be- 
lief. We speak of the faith in a future life 
and rightly so, refraining from application of 
the word knowledge to our thought concerning 
it. 

No one can be said to know that he is immor- 
tal. When Emerson and Theodore Parker, 
Addison and Samuel Taylor Coleridge affirmed 
that they knew they were immortal the most 
they could possibly have meant was that they 
had a very strong assurance, a very powerful 
intimation of immortality. Whether or not we 
are immortal is a question as to whether or not 
we shall continue to live after the state called 
Death ; and since that cannot be decided or real- 
ized until it occurs, no one can say, in advance, 
that he knows it. Before we can claim knowl- 
edge concerning the hereafter we must be able 
to add to our reasoning experience, because into 
every act of human knowledge there enter both 
reason and experience, and of immortality no 
one can be said to have had experience. True, 
the spiritualists make that claim, but we shall 
have occasion to examine the grounds of their 
contention and see that they do not warrant the 
claim. 

No, we have but faith, we cannot know, yet 
xiv 



INTEODUCTION 

let it not be forgotten that the faith which be- 
gins where knowledge ends is one of the per- 
manent assets of the spiritual life. Think how 
our nature gains in depth and in height, when, 
in the absence of knowledge, we dare to live as 
though we actually knew; when, in the absence 
of demonstration, we dare to live as though 
justice and love were at the heart of things! 
Think how our nature gains in spiritual gran- 
deur, when, in the absence of proof, we dare to 
live as though there were a veritable eternity 
of opportunity for development ahead of us! 
The truly great man is not he who has a ready 
answer for every vexing question and who lives 
with the complacency that is born of dogma- 
tism. Nay, the truly great man is he who, in 
the absence of knowledge, rests back upon a ra- 
tional faith and makes that faith the basis of 
further progress. The truly great man, I take 
it, is he who has a fund of moral heroism upon 
which he can draw whenever face to face with 
one or another of the conditions that are bound 
up with our agnosticism about the hereafter. 
To be minus that moral heroism and the spirit- 
ual heights of character to which it can lift us 
would be to lose what is of priceless worth. 
This is the dominant note in the ethical mes- 
xv 



I 



INTEODUCTION 

ful appeal ha the best ^o P to hel 

to the spiritual w*«m ^ & & t 

By the word soul J f w i t hm 

an ° U \ t SSS Snttn is indeed a 
our physical frame. other 

^^ " • 1 thaUive, U has an element of truth 
superstitions that »J e » . witnin us 

in it which keeps it ahv<, Tb*e . 
something nonmatenal, ^J~ ^ edne s S a t- 
something by reason <* J^"£ realit y of 
taches to each human being and t _ 
wh ioh we ascertain by ^P ea ^ hysical a nd 

«[' t TZ-llsSLmthepre- 
moral pam. We may explanation 

sumptuousness ^ would offer an p ^ 

for the terrible suffer^ to wh ^ 

toman beings are subjected but w 
ue of the finest spiritual va to* o ^ 

experience did we , i tal t > den beings 

^ fOT Rattan t a s^ul and ^ a body. 
in essence, that man w a e mpow- 

Such is the mighty «£*>%£& worJd as 
ered to extract from pain -J™» ^ prob . 
it is and the existence of vil s» ^ ^ ^ 
lem, we are yet blessed m b ^ 

pain to such sublime account, making 



INTRODUCTION 

vealer of a soul, a spiritual self within us that 
can say to pain: "You can have no power over 
me save as I supply the weapons. ' ' 

It is, then, foundations for faith in the sur- 
vival after death of the soul, the spiritual self, 
that we are to consider. And the reality of soul 
is mad known through experience of physical 
and moral evil, of disease and remorse, more, 
perhaps, than through any other source. 

Let us begin by examining a group of three 
minor foundations, still popular in certain quar- 
ters, but perhaps less entitled than any others to 
keep their hold on modern thought. These 
three minor bases are: (1) the universality of 
the belief in a hereafter; (2) the instinctive de- 
sire for a future life; (3) intuition, or immedi- 
ate awareness of immortality. 

Our attention will be directed, next, to the 
Christian basis with its four hundred million 
and more adherents. Then will follow consid- 
eration of a group of three foundations iden- 
tified with modern occultism: spiritualism, 
psychical research, and theosophy, and finally 
(and engrossing our thought to a greater degree 
than any other), the foundation in moral expe- 
rience and the practical relation it bears to the 
ethics of personal life. 

xvii 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 



THREE MINOR FOUNDATIONS 

We begin our series of studies in foundations 
for the faith in a future life by examining a 
group of three which, for convenience, we 
shall call minor foundations. 

1. The alleged universality of the belief in a 
life beyond death. Man has always looked 
upon death as a way station rather than as a 
terminus. Yet his conception of the hereafter 
has not always bfeen tantamount to personal im- 
mortality, i. e., conscious, active, joyous exist- 
ence. Consequently we cannot support the 
faith in such a future on the basis of its uni- 
versality. The truth is that this conception of 
the hereafter is not and never was universal, 
Eead the Old Testament with reference to this 
subject and see how persistently the Hebrew 
held to the belief in Sheol, that "land of thick 
darkness, without any order and where the 

1 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

light is as darkness. ' ? x Thither the souls of all 
the dead, good and bad alike, departed and 
there, in a colorless, shadowy, ghostlike, pur- 
poseless existence, they passed their days, a 
state that could not be characterized as "life," 
so void was it of all that the heart of man de- 
sires. Certain passages in the Hebrew Bible 
there are, which seem to suggest personal im- 
mortality, but on closer study it is found that 
these refer only to the present life. With the 
single exception of a passage in the book of 
Daniel, 2 a very late book, written about 165 
b.c, the prevailing view of the hereafter is 
negative and gloomy. 3 And all the more re- 
markable is the absence in the Old Testament 
of any faith in conscious, joyous, active life be- 
yond death, when we recall the contact of early 
Hebrew civilization with Egyptian life, domi- 
nated as the latter was by a highly developed, 
fully organized, realistic conception of a life to 
come. 

True, the question may be raised whether, 
after all, there was any such contact of He- 
brew with Egyptian civilization in pre-monarch- 

1 Job 10: 20. 

2 Daniel 12 : 2. 

3 See the quotations, confirming this statement, cited in 
Professor Toy's "Judaism and Christianity," pp. 379 ff. 

2 



THKEE MINOR FOUNDATIONS 

ical Hebrew history. It may be that by reason 
of their residence in the outlying region of 
Goshen, where the Hebrews were permitted to 
pasture their flocks, they came into no lively 
intellectual contact with Egyptian religious 
thought and hence knew nothing of Egyptian 
eschatology. This would account not only for 
their retention of the old Semitic conception of 
Sheol but also for the absence of any refer- 
ence in early Hebrew literature to the anti- 
thetical Egyptian belief in personal active sur- 
vival of death. Certain it is that throughout 
the Old Testament we find the Hebrews wholly 
unaffected by Egyptian ideas of the hereafter. 
Not until their contact with Greek civilization 
in Egyptian Alexandria, as seen in the inter- 
biblical " Wisdom of Solomon,' ' did the Jews 
respond to Egyptian influence in reshaping 
their doctrine of the hereafter. There, in that 
work of an Alexandrian Jew of the second cen- 
tury before our era, we find the first explicit 
statement of the belief in personal immortal- 
ity. 1 

Akin to the Hebrew Sheol was the Greek 
Hades, anticipation of which caused the 
Greeks to look on old age as only one degree 

1 "Wisdom of Solomon," 1:23; 2:4. 
3 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

less loathsome than death, while the Trojan 
Achilles expressed his preference for perpetual 
life on earth as a keeper of swine, to kingship 
over the realm of the dead, where the " shades" 
eke out a joyless, actionless, colorless existence. 
Among Greek philosophers prior to Plato the 
belief in personal survival after death was not 
deemed of sufficient consequence to be incor- 
porated in their teaching. Socrates was even 
somewhat skeptical on the subject, treating it 
at times with refined irony but never once as an 
essential prerequisite for the moral life. Spi- 
noza shared the ethical attitude of Socrates to 
the question and denied personal immortality 
while holding to the eternality of the human 
mind as "part of the infinite Substance," God. 

So Lotze, among modern philosophical 
thinkers, saw no reason for maintaining that 
human beings are necessarily immortal. 
Rather was it his view that they fulfil a certain 
temporary purpose in the Divine plan, and, 
when fulfilled, they are no longer required in 
the scheme of things and so cease to be. 

Confucianism, with its eighty million adhe- 
rents, furnishes a present-day instance of the 
non-universality of the belief in immortality. 
The founder of that religious system was a pro- 

4 



THEEE MINOR FOUNDATIONS 

nounced and confirmed agnostic on the subject 
and inculcated absolute indifference to it. 
When besought by his disciples, as he so often 
was, to tell them something concerning the 
hereafter, he invariably turned their attention 
to the pressing moral needs of the living pres- 
ent. Small wonder that, for want of this belief 
in their own system, many Confucianists enlist 
the services of Taoist or Buddhist priests in the 
hour of death and bereavement. 

But even if the belief in a hereafter were uni- 
versal it would not prove the belief to be true. 
The Ptolemaic astronomy was universal for cen- 
turies, but it was not true; for, in 1543, Co- 
pernicus published his "Constitution of the 
Universe,' ' shattering the "crystal spheres' ' of 
Ptolemy and establishing the heliocentric as a 
substitute for the geocentric theory of the cos- 
mos. 

To rest the faith in a future life on the foun- 
dation of universality is, therefore, to base it 
both on an untruth and on an illogical inference. 

2. The instinctive desire for immortality. 
It is said that because man has an instinctive 
desire for continuance of life after death, there- 
fore like all his other instincts this one, too, 
will be provided for. Everywhere and always, 

5 



FAITH IN A FUTUBE LIFE 

we are told, the loving, yearning, hungry hu- 
man heart has instinctively protested against an 
affirmative answer to the poet's question: 

Is this the whole sad story of creation 
Told by its toiling millions o'er and o'er? 
One glimpse of day, then black annihilation, 
A sunlit passage to a sunless shore ? 

Nay, not so, the heart instinctively cries, 
clinging with passionate embrace to its cher- 
ished faith while rebelling against such an out- 
come of creation's story. All our other in- 
stincts, it is fervently suggested, have their ap- 
propriate objects of satisfaction. We have an 
instinctive desire for food and food is supplied ; 
for knowledge, and the means of learning are 
furnished; for social relationships, and society 
is provided. Must not then this instinctive de- 
sire for personal survival after death be like- 
wise satisfied? Surely, continues the advocate 
of this view, surely this instinct of immortality 
which, "like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the 
human breast, with its countless waves of hope 
and fear, beating against the shores and rocks 
of time and fate," was not born of any book 
or creed and therefore it will continue to ebb 
and flow "between the mists of doubt and dark- 
ness as long as love kisses the lips of death." 

6 



THREE MINOR FOUNDATIONS 

Expressed in these emotional terms, the argu- 
ment seems as conclusive as it is appealing. 
But, stripped of this picturesque presentation, 
the lurking fallacy at once comes to light. 
Clearly enough, the instinctive desire for food 
does not guarantee that for all eternity we shall 
be provided with all we can eat. Neither does 
the instinctive desire for life carry with it the 
certainty of its indefinite prolongation. Quite 
apart, however, from so unwarrantable a basis 
for the belief in immortality is the fact that the 
desire for it is by no means universally ac- 
knowledged either as an instinctive or as an 
acquired desire. Thousands there are within 
and without Christendom, who confess to no 
consciousness of any such "instinct" in their 
psychical constitution. Other thousands have 
been so burdened and exasperated by the bitter, 
intolerable conditions of their earthly lot that, 
for them, annihilation is the ultimate desire. 
Still others there are, epicureans, sybarites, 
bon-vivants, people who have lived for the 
lower satisfactions of life, in whom no instinc- 
tive desire for survival of death is present but, 
on the contrary, only a readiness to give place 
to others, now that their own "good time" has 
come to an end. 

7 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

Not only is the desire for personal immortal- 
ity non-universal, but human imagination has 
not always succeeded in making a future state 
sufficiently attractive to kindle desire for it. 
The primitive barbarian, for example, far from 
rejoicing in the prospect of a life to come shud- 
dered as he thought of his approaching earthly 
end, reluctant as he was to exchange the fa- 
miliar joys of the warm and sunny earth for 
the unknown climate and companionship of an- 
other world. If Professor Max Miiller's con- 
ception of Nirvana be correct, then whole 
races of Buddhists anticipate ultimate annihila- 
tion as the goal of life and welcome it as the 
culmination of that long series of rebirths to 
which they believe they are destined. And 
without the pale of Buddhism are thousands 
who, for one reason or another, have no desire 
for immortality, preferring annihilation to any 
resumption of life after death, Achilles, as we 
have seen, contemplating post-mortem condi- 
tions, declared that he would prefer the most 
menial earthly occupation to kingship over the 
dead. General Grant, reflecting upon the 
Christian picture of Heaven, drawn from the 
New Testament Apocalypse, expressed his ab- 
horrence of the prospect of perpetual psalm 

8 



THREE MINOR FOUNDATIONS 

singing and harp playing, a prospect to him as 
dreary and distressing as that of the ancient 
Greek anticipating Hades. 

To base belief in a future life on an alleged 
instinctive desire for it is thus as unwarrant- 
able as to found it on the alleged universality 
of the belief. 

3. Intuition, the transcendental foundation. 
Turn we now to the third in the group of minor 
foundations, one which has been peculiarly 
identified with the so-called transcendentalists, 
represented in England notably by Addison, 
Coleridge, Max Miiller; in the United States 
by Theodore Parker, Alcott, Emerson and not 
without its representatives to-day. Man, they 
say, cannot live by intellect alone, intuition must 
be recognized. Man's spirit is a greater thing 
than his intellect. Prove, if you will, that his 
intuition has no just title to be consulted ; e pur 
si muove, witness the vogue of Bergson, Eucken 
and Maeterlinck. According to the intuition- 
ists, or transcendentalists, man is in possession 
of a "primary faculty" transcending reason 
and experience, making him immediately cog- 
nizant of spiritual realities; hence their name. 
God, immortality, duty, according to transcen- 
dentalism, are "facts of consciousness/ ' part 

9 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

and parcel of the human mind, truths wrought 
into the very structure of the human soul and 
wholly independent of experience, testimony or 
demonstration. Knowledge of God's existence 
and of immortality is "an intuition of reason, 
depending primarily on no argument whatever ; 
not on reasoning, but on Eeason. It comes 
spontaneously. The belief always precedes the 
proof, intuition giving the thing to be reasoned 
about.'' 1 Corresponding to this view of 
Parker we have the statement of Max Mullen 
"There is a faculty in man coordinate with 
sense and reason, the faculty of perceiving the 
infinite ; Vernunft as contrasted with Ver stand 
(reason) and Sinne (sense). It is the faculty 
of faith, restricted to those objects which can- 
not be supplied by the evidence of the senses or 
by the evidence of reason, a power independent 
of sense and reason, while alone able to over- 
come both reason and sense." 2 With the aid 
of this "third faculty" transcendentalism res- 
cued the cardinal doctrines of religion, God, and 
immortality, from death. The philosophy of 
sensation, heralded by Locke, with this motto, 

1 Parker : "Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion," 
pp. 21, 22. 

2 Miiller: "Science of Religion," pp. 13-15. 

10 



THREE MINOR FOUNDATIONS 

" Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu," 
furnished no warrant for the belief in the soul's 
survival of death, because immortality is not 
demonstrable to the senses. But by taking the 
doctrine out from the field of sense-experience 
and making it an integral element in the con- 
stitution of the mind itself, transcendentalism 
rescued it from its dangerous position and 
placed it where it seemed permanently safe. 
Arguments to prove the reality of immortality 
were now no more in order than were argu- 
ments to prove the reality of beauty or the 
worth of love. With Addison, intuitionists have 

. . . felt their immortality o'ersweep 

All time, all change, all fears 

And peal like the eternal thunders of the deep 

Into their ears this truth — 

Man thou shalt never die. 

Redolent as are the writings of Emerson with 
faith in a future life, we search in vain for 
argument in support of it. Not a single paper 
in the whole series of his "Dial" was devoted 
to debate of the subject. It was too deep, too 
elemental to be discussed. It was assumed, it 
was "known" — beyond cavil or question. 
And whereas the objections of materialism did 
not in the least disturb the transcendentalists, 

11 



FAITH IN A FUTUKE LIFE 

the traditional arguments of orthodox Chris- 
tians, based on Church authority, or on scrip- 
tural revelation, were repudiated as stumbling 
blocks in the way of spiritual faith because they 
diverted attention from the witness of the soul, 
the testimony of the "inner light." Holding 
that the " intuition of reason" is synonymous 
with " revelation from God," that the function 
of this special " third faculty" is to receive the 
" revelation," the intuitionist simply elevated 
the ideas of God, immortality, and duty above 
the reach of legitimate doubt and examination. 
For him they were too sacred to be tested or 
scrutinized by the discursive reason or "under- 
standing"; rather were they to be accepted by 
it unreservedly and submissively. To demand 
credentials for the validity of these great ideas, 
to wish to subject them to the test by which 
science sifts truth from error, is, in the estima- 
tion of the transcendentalist, the arch impiety 
and proof of a perverted religious nature. Let 
the claims of the Pope, the Bible, the Church, 
the Christ, be freely investigated ; but not these 
ultimate religious ideas. To exercise indepen- 
dent, unfettered thought upon them is to be 
guilty of "irreligion" of ' ' ethico-religious un- 
soundness." Small wonder, then, that intui- 

12 



THREE MINOR FOUNDATIONS 

tion has been called the "last ditch" of dogma- 
tism. For papal and biblical infallibilities it 
substitutes a transcendental infallibility. ? Tis 
a silken cord indeed, as against the earlier 
chains, yet it restricts freedom of thought and 
suppresses the right of the intellect to demand 
a reason for the faith it holds. The questioning 
thought of the twentieth century is not to be 
quieted by the simple "I feel" or "I know" of 
intuition. The one subject on which everybody 
is obliged to be agnostic is immortality — no 
one can say, I know I am immortal. The most 
one can possibly mean who makes this assertion 
is that he has a strong assurance, a powerful 
intimation. Assuredly is it a misuse of lan- 
guage for a man to say he " knows" today a 
possible future fact. The question whether or 
not he is immortal is a question of the continu- 
ance of his life after the fact called death. 
And since this is a fact that can be known only 
when it comes, it is impossible for him to be 
conscious of it now. The difficulty attending 
intuition as a foundation on which to rest one's 
faith in a future life lies in the impossibility 
of verifying its "revelations." Were all peo- 
ple aware of the existence within them of such 
a transcendent faculty, a universal source of 

13 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

appeal would be at hand ; but in the absence of 
anything even approaching universal acknowl- 
edgment of such a "primary instrument of 
knowledge," the evidential value of intuition is 
necessarily limited to those persons who con- 
sider themselves so endowed. It can never take 
rank as a universal criterion of truth and noth- 
ing short of that can permanently satisfy the 
seeker after truth. Just as Eomanism exalted 
the principle of universal reason to sole sover- 
eignty, settling all questions of creed and con- 
duct by appeal to the Pope as representative 
of the universal reason of the faithful, so in- 
tuitionism exalts the principle of private judg- 
ment, recognizing no external authority in faith 
and morals as superior to intuition. Yet only 
as both principles are reconciled in the method 
of science, which accords to every individual 
the right of private judgment, yet makes its 
appeal to enlightened public opinion, the ag- 
gregated wisdom of the whole, the "Consensus 
of the Competent" (as the lamented Francis 
E. Abbot described it), can we turn our backs 
on infallibilities and make the nearest possible 
approach to absolute truth permitted to man. 
For science solves vexed questions neither ab- 
solutely, nor infallibly, but approximately, 

14 



THEEE MINOR FOUNDATIONS 

She decides on the facts so far as known and 
reserves the right to reconsider her decisions 
in the light of fresh facts, or fresh knowledge 
of old facts. While, therefore, intuition may 
serve as an adequate foundation for the faith 
in a future life, in the estimation of individuals 
who believe they have that "f acuity' ' it can 
never transcend this individualistic limitation 
and appeal to the world at large. When ques- 
tioned as to whether the words God, immortal- 
ity, duty, are words of truth, the intuitionist re- 
sorts to the bare affirmation of ' ' a faith that can 
give no reason for itself ' asserting on the 
strength of his private intuition, "I know." 
But instantly there comes back the question, 
"How do you know t " If to that question there 
be still nothing but a reaffirmation of the words 
"I know," then, in spite of his undoubting cer- 
titude, the intelligence of the age will record its 
inevitable verdict, "He does not know; he fan- 
cies, he dreams." And its verdict will be just. 1 
As a dogma, whether papal, biblical or intui- 
tional, the faith in a future life must die. As a 
sublime hypothesis it must submit to the test 

1 Even Emerson cannot escape that verdict: "I delight/' 
he says, "in telling what I think, but if you ask me, how I 
dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men." 

15 



FAITH IN A FUTUKE LIFE 

of educated intelligence. Modern disciplined 
thought asserts its indefeasible right to sit in 
judgment on this mighty guess and its demand 
must be granted. It knows nothing of finali- 
ties or authorities that dare not be doubted. It 
plainly accepts all the risks of a fallibility that 
cannot be escaped but which can be reduced to 
a minimum by the consentaneous judgment of 
free and trained minds. In short, the intel- 
lectual irresponsibility of intuition must be 
checked if society is to be saved from the peril 
to which individualism exposes it. 



II 

THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION 

For the Christian millions faith in a future 
life is founded on the New Testament record 
of the most stupendous of all miracles. It is 
that the veritable body of Jesus rose from the 
tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and having thus 
risen appeared to disciples, talked with them, 
gave them directions and then ascended to 
heaven in the selfsame body he had worn 
throughout the thirty years of his earthly life. 

It is this miracle and the inference of per- 
sonal immortality which believing Christians 
draw from it that the Easter festival annually 
commemorates. The alleged physical resurrec- 
tion of Jesus — this is the Christian foundation 
for the faith in a future life. But the difficulty 
here is that what Christians offer as proof of 
immortality is itself in need of being proved. 
Not only does the evidence fail to establish the 
occurrence of such a miracle but a physical res- 
urrection from the grave is not at all what was 

17 



FAITH IN A FUTUKE LIFE 

believed and taught by Paul and the apostles. 

Eecall with me briefly what the New Testa- 
ment tells us on the subject. 

Our earliest witness is the Apostle Paul. He 
expressly states that he never saw Jesus in the 
flesh (I Cor. 15:8). The one and only way in 
which Jesus was seen by him was in a "vision' ' 
on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus (Acts 
9: 3-19 et passim). Moreover he confesses he 
was given to seeing visions, to having strange 
psychic experiences (II Cor. 12:1-4). From 
this we infer that the successive appearances of 
Jesus, related by the Apostle in his first letter 
to the Corinthians, were regarded by him as of 
the same vision type as his own on the journey 
to Damascus. In none of his letters does Paul 
testify to a resurrection of Jesus from the 
grave. What he does testify to is a resurrec- 
tion from the dead — a distinction to which we 
shall shortly return. Paul, moreover, makes 
no mention of the reports of women at the tomb, 
nor of any appearances there or on the road to 
Emmaus, nor of Jesus, at a post-mortem ap- 
pearance, eating fish in the company of dis- 
ciples. Paul knew nothing of an empty tomb 
nor of visits that were made to it. Yet he was 
Peter's guest for a fortnight at Jerusalem (Gal. 

18 



THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION 

1:18). How, then, could Peter have failed to 
make mention of these details if he knew them? 
Or how could Paul have failed to make use of 
them when confuting the skeptical Corinthians 
had he ever heard of these particulars? Nay 
more, any report of an empty tomb would have 
completely set at naught the argument adduced 
in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the 
Corinthians. Hence we are forced to the con- 
clusion that all these details found in the Gos- 
pels of Matthew and Luke, and written much 
later than Paul's letter, originated after the 
visit to Peter, who himself knew nothing of 
them. 

Turning next to what is known as the ' i Triple 
Tradition, ' ' the story of Jesus ' life in which all 
three of the Synoptic Gospels agree, we ob- 
serve that the narrative of a physical resurrec- 
tion is no part of that source of information. 
True, the Gospels according to Matthew and 
Luke contain such a story, but it is missing in 
Mark's gospel. For the ending of that gospel 
as we have it in our New Testament is not the 
original ending. In the margin of the Revised 
Version we are expressly told that these con- 
cluding verses of the Gospel (9-20) "are 
omitted in the two oldest Greek Manuscripts" 

19 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

and that ' 'other authorities have a different 
ending to the Gospel.' ' When inspecting the 
earliest extant New Testament manuscript in 
the imperial library at St. Petersburg, I was 
particularly impressed by the gap covering the 
space which the twelve verses of the present 
ending of the Gospel occupy and also by the 
abruptness of the ending of the Gospel, in the 
middle of a sentence and with the word " be- 
cause." The probability is that the original 
ending of the gospel was unorthodox, recount- 
ing a "Docetic" or phantasmal appearance of 
Jesus after his death and for this reason was 
suppressed. Finding too in Matthew's story 
the phrase "but some doubted, " we infer that 
the reason for skepticism was the nature of the 
appearance. When we compare with one an- 
other the accounts of a physical resurrection as 
given in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, we 
observe that they differ in eight particulars and 
all relating to what happened at the tomb. 

Comparing the reports of all three Gospels 
(Mark, Matthew and Luke) we note that the 
points of difference now increase from eight 
to twelve. 

Add the account given in the Fourth Gospel 
to the resurrection narratives already exam- 

20 



THE CHEISTIAN FOUNDATION 

ined, and we find the points of difference in- 
crease from twelve to twenty-one. 1 

So far then as the testimony of the records 
is concerned — and remembering that we know 
not who wrote the Gospels — the evidence 
amounts only to this : somebody said that some- 
body saw Jesus, somewhere, somehow, after he 
had been entombed. In no irreverent or flip- 
pant spirit is the evidence thus summed up. It 
seems to express succinctly and with precision 
what the records compel us to conclude. 

But what we have to note now is that not 
only do the records furnish no valid evidence 
for belief in a physical resurrection of Jesus, 
but also it is not what Paul and the apostles be- 
lieved and taught. They believed and taught a 
resurrection from the dead, not a resurrection 
from the grave. Let me explain. In Old Tes- 
tament times the Hebrews believed that at 
death all souls, good and bad alike, departed to 
Sheol, the underworld, that "land of thick 
darkness" as Job described it, "where the light 
is as darkness." There the dead passed their 
days in a gloomy, shadowy, ghostlike colorless 
existence. But during the interbiblical period, 

1 For a detailed statement, see the Author's "Life of Jesus 
in the Light of the Higher Criticism," pp. 221 ft. 

21 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

i. e., between the latest book of the Old Testa- 
ment and the earliest of the New Testament, the 
belief gradually grew np in a division of Sheol 
into two sections, the one Gehenna, reserved 
for the wicked, and the other Paradise tenanted 
by the good; the two sections within visible 
and speaking distance of each other. This be- 
lief passed over into the New Testament and 
appears in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, 
recorded by Luke. Dives, agonizing in Ge- 
henna, looks across the gulf separating it from 
Paradise and there sees poor Lazarus leaning 
on the bosom of Abraham. Dives calls to the 
patriarch bidding him ask Lazarus to dip his 
finger in water and bring relief to the burning 
tongue of Dives. Still another instance of the 
presence of this belief in the Gospels is fur- 
nished by the remark of Jesus to the penitent 
thief upon the cross: "This day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise," meaning that portion 
of Sheol marked off for the repentent and the 
righteous; not the celestial Heaven, synony- 
mous only at a later day with Paradise. In 
Jesus ' time it was believed that Heaven was the 
home of only God, the angels, Enoch and Elijah. 
All other beings that had died were thought of 
as in Sheol-Gehenna, or in Sheol-Paradise. 

22 



THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION 

But even in this latter section, life was any- 
thing but desirable — joyless, actionless, pur- 
poseless, hopeless, cut off from all communion 
with God and all terrestrial relations and inter- 
ests. Hence, there grew up the further belief 
that they who had been accounted worthy to oc- 
cupy the Paradise portion of Sheol would some- 
how escape from this underworld and be resur- 
rected from Sheol, when the great Messianic 
era would dawn. In the interbiblical book of 
"Enoch" we see this belief in an advanced stage 
of crystallization. And when we turn to the 
famous fifteenth chapter of Paul's first letter 
to the Corinthians we see the belief in its fully 
developed form. Here the Apostle declares to 
the skeptical Corinthians that Jesus has al- 
ready risen from the dead and is indeed "the 
first-fruits of them that slept" i. e., the first to 
have come up from Sheol (where life resembled 
a sleep rather than a waking state), "and has 
ascended into heaven whence he will shortly de- 
scend at the sound of the trump" and all the 
faithful in Sheol will ascend, wearing ' l celestial 
bodies," incorruptible, immortal. In the first 
letter to the Thessalonians still fuller details 
are given. There we read that when the risen 
Christ descends with a shout, at the sound of 

23 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

the trump, to establish the heavenly kingdom 
on earth they in Sheol, who believe he is the 
Messiah, will first be resurrected and then they 
who are still living and thus believe shall be 
"caught up in the clouds" together with them 
that had risen from Sheol, "to meet the Lord 
in the air" and all together be "ever with the 
Lord. " ' * Small wonder that the first Chris- 
tians walked the streets of Jerusalem with their* 
faces turned upward, eager to catch the very 
first glimpse of the descending Christ (Acts 
1:2). Thus the word "resurrection" as used 
by Paul and his fellow-converts signified only 
resurrection from the dead, from Sheol, never 
a physical resurrection from the grave. Jesus 
himself used the word with the selfsame sig- 
nification current in the first century in Pales- 
tine. In his discussion with the Sadducees, re- 
corded in the twelfth chapter of Mark, he uses 
the expression "when they shall rise from the 
dead." 

In the light of this prevailing conception of 
the resurrection of the soul from Sheol as 
against the resurrection of the body from the 
grave, how unnatural and absurd it would have 
been for the disciples to go to the tomb to see if 

1 1 Thess. 4. 

24 



THE CHEISTIAN FOUNDATION 

Jesus' body were still there or not! They had 
no interest in his body; what concerned them 
was his soul and its residence in Sheol. Surely 
one as spiritually great as he must have es- 
caped from Paradise, ascended to Heaven and 
will soon return to earth to establish the King- 
dom of which he preached. Had not Enoch and 
Elijah been translated to Heaven? How much 
more worthy he who transcended the patriarch 
and the prophet ! How could so exalted and ex- 
alting a personality be permitted to remain in 
Sheol ! He must have risen. No other alterna- 
tive is any longer to be entertained. In some 
such wise the disciples reflected — as we are led 
to infer from the New Testament record. How 
natural and inevitable such reflection must have 
been! On that fateful Thursday evening they 
had been terrorstricken by the arrest of their 
master. In terror they fled from Gethsemane 
and found their way back to Galilee (Acts 
1:2; compare Mk. 14:5). Here they took 
breath and came to themselves. For here they 
had walked and talked with Jesus, day after 
day, for a year or more. Here every 
footpath, valley, lakeshore, hilltop was sancti- 
fied by the memory of his presence and 
his preaching. Here, then, the conviction came 

25 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

to the disciples that he whom they had thus 
known and loved and revered could not remain 
in Sheol but must have risen, ascended to 
Heaven, soon to fulfill the heavenly Father's 
commission and usher in the Kingdom of God 
on earth. But for the rise of this conviction 
in the minds and hearts of the disciples they 
would never have rallied at Jerusalem as we 
read they did. But for that mighty belief of 
theirs the birth of Christianity would have been 
indefinitely postponed. Given this intense con- 
viction and it needed only a hint, a rumor that 
someone had seen Jesus, to start the legend of 
a physical resurrection. And, once started, it 
would quickly and spontaneously take on in- 
creasing marvelous detail — as in the retelling of 
many other incidents which the Gospels record x 
— especially in that age when the masses were 
on tiptoe of excitement in anticipation of the 
speedy advent of the Messiah. Hence the 
story of a physical resurrection from the grave 
followed upon the conviction of the disciples 
that their Master could not remain in Sheol 
but had experienced a resurrection from the 
dead. They had been dull of understanding 

2 For illustration, see the Author's "Life of Jesus," pp. 
85, 212. 

26 



THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION 

but now that this conviction had come upon 
them they comprehended their mission to man- 
kind. They had slept in Gethsemane, now they 
were awake to the pressing need of the hour. 
They had fled from their Master's cross, now 
they were ready to take up their own cross. 
They had been sheep, timidly following the 
shepherd, now they were themselves shepherds, 
eager to give their life for the sheep. Thus, 
for the belief in a physical resurrection of Jesus, 
we substitute the belief that his body perished, 
returned to dust, mingled with the streams, 
nourished the grasses and the flowers, while 
what he stood for rose again through the resur- 
rection of faith, courage, loyalty, consecration, 
in the hearts of his despondent and despairing 
disciples. Christianity, therefore, arose not in 
a fiction, nor in a delusion, much less in an im- 
posture. It arose, not from a material fact, 
but from a great spiritual fact which promptly 
brought other spiritual facts in its train. 
First, there was the thought of the personality 
and influence of Jesus as recalled by the disci- 
ples when they were once more in Galilee. 
That thought gave rise to the conviction that 
their master could not be in Paradise-Sheol 
with all the rest of the noble dead, but that he, 

27 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

above all others, must have escaped and as- 
cended to heaven soon to return to earth and 
reign over the Messianic Kingdom. That con- 
viction transformed the disciples from despair- 
ing cowards into apostolic heroes, heralding 
their conviction that Jesus was now in heaven 
and would soon come back to earth. From the 
heralding of that belief sprang the rumor that 
Jesus had been seen, and from the rumor were 
eventually evolved the familiar stories of a 
physical resurrection. These, I incline to be- 
lieve, were the five successive steps in the pro- 
cess that led to the belief in a physical resurrec- 
tion of Jesus. 

"We are thus brought back to my initial remark 
that what is offered as proof of immortality is 
itself in need of being proved. The evidence 
simply does not support the belief in a physical 
resurrection of Jesus and what is more this 
does not represent the conception entertained by 
Paul and the Apostles who gave the word "res- 
urrection" only the same connotation that Je- 
sus applied to it, viz., the soul's rising from 
Sheol, tersely expressed in the phrase "resur- 
rection from the dead. ' ' 

But now, even were it granted that Jesus did 
rise physically from the grave, it would not 

28 



THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION 

follow that all believing Christians are immor- 
tal. For, according to their view, it was the 
"Son of God" that thus rose and we are not 
warranted in inferring the immortality of or- 
dinary beings from the experience of one who 
was supernatural. Jesus, in the estimation of 
all Christians, differed from all other persons 
in kind as well as in degree. It would there- 
fore be illogical to infer from the resurrection 
of so unique a personality the immortality of 
lesser souls albeit they believe in his unique- 
ness. 

Nay more, not even were Jesus a man, differ- 
ing from all other souls only in degree, a view 
that has the support of the Synoptic Gospels, 
would his resurrection prove the immortality 
of his followers. All that could be logically, 
consistently inferred therefrom would be that 
not all men are eternally subject to death; i. e., 
what occurred in the case of one man might 
possibly occur in the case of others. Conse- 
quently whether we take the orthodox or the 
heterodox view of Jesus r personality, the al- 
leged miracle of his resurrection furnishes no 
adequate foundation for the faith in a future 
life. Certain, at any rate, it is, that future gen- 
erations will not attach the evidential value to 

29 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

the New Testament story that has been ac- 
corded it in the past. Equally certain it would 
seem that apart from some sort of evidential 
support for the belief in immortality it is not 
likely to take on any new or greater degree of 
importance for the people of coming centuries. 



Ill 

THE THESIS OF MATERIALISM 

Before entering upon discussion of the foun- 
dations for faith in a future life which modern 
occultism presents, it may be well if at this 
point we pause to consider a negative aspect of 
our subject, one which has been given forceful 
expression by a class of scientific thinkers com- 
monly known as materialists. Their contention 
is that the faith in a future life must be dis- 
credited because there are "established con- 
clusions of science" with which that faith fails 
to harmonize. Very widely does this opinion 
prevail, extending far beyond the circle of 
avowed materialists. Science, it is said, has 
pushed her investigations so far that the last 
vestige of a reasonable basis for the doctrine of 
personal immortality has disappeared. 

It behooves us therefore, as free truth-seek- 
ers, to examine the thesis of materialism and 
determine whether its claim can be substanti- 
ated or whether, perchance, its destructive 

31 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

shaft, like the boomerang, has recoiled upon the 
projector, and with fatal effect. 

In the estimation of materialists all phenom- 
ena whatsoever, be they in outward nature, or 
in human consciousness, are explicable by the 
ultimate properties of matter. It is main- 
tained, moreover, that these properties are 
eternal and underived; existing, therefore, as 
ultimate facts which explain everything while 
remaining themselves unexplained. According 
to this view not only is consciousness the prod- 
uct of a peculiar organization of matter but it 
cannot survive the disorganization of the ma- 
terial body with which it is associated. In 
other words, every living person is an organized 
whole and consciousness is something which 
pertains to this organized whole, as music be- 
longs to the harp that is entire; but when the 
harp is broken it is silent; so when the or- 
ganized whole of personality falls to pieces 
consciousness ceases forever. Tyndall, in his 
famous Belfast address, described matter as 
' l that mysterious thing by which all phenomena 
have been accomplished from the evaporation 
of a drop of water to the conscious life of man, ' ' 
a statement of which it has been truly said, "it 
is not a definition but an oracle. ' ' To say that 

32 



THE THESIS OF MATERIALISM 

the force inherent in matter is matter, is to rea- 
son in a circle rather than toward a goal. Pro- 
fessor Hering, of Vienna, included memory 
among the inherent properties of matter and 
referred to it as "the reproduction of parental 
forms, " a position which clearly "begs the 
question" because memory is a purely intellec- 
tual function and, as such, cannot be classed 
among physical properties at all. 

Martineau in his memorable address on 
"Substitutes for Grod" makes short work of the 
unwarranted liberties that materialists have 
taken in their effort to explain consciousness in 
terms of matter. The materialist asks for as 
many kinds of atoms as there are chemical ele- 
ments, seventy-two in all. But how, even with 
these, can consciousness be educed? How can 
the concurrence of any number of any kind of 
atoms ever explain consciousness? And when 
the materialist replies by positing "polarity 
and gravitation" among the eternal properties 
of matter and "organic and inorganic mole- 
cules" as constituting "the one and only sub- 
stance," it becomes clear that each new emer- 
gency is provided for by a new ascription 
to matter of some quality or property not in 
requisition before. Matter "began as a beggar 

33 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

and lo, it turns up as a prince,' ' loaded with 
more and more properties to meet the ever 
heavier tax that is put upon it. Like a bank 
account, the original deposit of matter is re- 
peatedly drawn on to meet each new demand 
and every claim seems to have been honorably 
met, whereas the account was overdrawn at the 
start when, in order to explain consciousness, 
more was required than was originally depos- 
ited; thus forcing the insolvent theory into the 
hands of a receiver. 

Clifford's "mind-stuff," HaeckePs atoms 
with " mind-sides," Leibnitz' "ideated mo- 
nads," what are these but ascriptions to matter 
of foreign elements in order to make it explain 
the phenomena of consciousness. As the miner 
"salts" his claim with gold dust to enhance its 
value for the unsuspecting purchaser, so the 
materialist ' i salts ' ' matter with mental or spir- 
itual qualities, not one of which can be taken out 
except as it was first put in. Not inaptly did 
Francis E. Abbot compare the thesis of materi- 
alism, that matter is the only substance and that 
all natural forces are but the qualities or prop- 
erties of matter, to the polytheism of the ancient 
Greeks and to the former's decided disadvan- 
tage. For him materialism was "a degenera- 

34 



THE THESIS OF MATERIALISM 

tion of mythological religion,' ' a neo-poly the- 
ism in which the Hellenic deities have become 
metaphysical entities or abstractions — the 
properties of matter being independent, unin- 
telligent powers whose blind, haphazard con- 
junctions or collisions have resulted in the 
world of Nature and of Man. 

"When Tyndall made his famous declarations 
that "the passage from the physics of the brain 
to the corresponding facts of consciousness is 
unthinkable " ; that "while a definite thought 
and a definite molecular action in the brain oc- 
cur simultaneously, we do not possess the intel- 
lectual organ which would enable us to pass, by 
a process of reasoning, from the one to the 
other"; that "the chasm between these physi- 
cal processes and the facts of consciousness 
remains intellectually impassable,' ' the great 
physicist disqualified materialism to sit as a 
juror in the case of conscious survival of death. 
Were brain and thought related to each other 
as cause and effect, materialism would hold the 
field and its claim to have disposed of immortal- 
ity would be substantiated. 

From physics we learn that heat, light and 
electricity are interconvertible because all are 
modes of motion. Motion is their common fac- 

35 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

tor. But between moving particles of gray 
matter in the brain and thought there is no 
such relation ; on the contrary, there is a chasm 
that has never yet been bridged. If thought 
is to be assigned a cause it must be of the 
same kind as the effect, and no such adequate 
cause has been discerned. How physical brain- 
processes are connected with the facts of con- 
sciousness still remains a mystery. Browning, 
in "Abt Vogler," furnishes a suggestive paral- 
lel here. Could we explain how, from the phys- 
ical musical notes, psychical emotional states 
are awakened, we would have solved the riddle 
of the universe. Hence his injunction to the 
reader reverently to bow before this mystery 
of music, as inexplicable indeed as the whence 
of thought, associated with physical processes 
in the brain. 

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is 

naught ; 
It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all is 

said: 
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my 

thought : 
And, there ! Ye have heard and seen : Consider and 

bow the head ! 

No, science has not disproved immortality 
and till it does no one need apologize for re- 

36 



THE THESIS OF MATERIALISM 

taining his faith. All that science has proved is 
that material processes accompany mental 
states, not that the latter are caused by the 
former. Science has proved that the molecular 
motion of the gray matter in the brain is con- 
comitant with thought, not that it is the cause 
of thought. Science has demonstrated that the 
eye is the organ of sight, but not the seer; the 
ear the organ of hearing but not the hearer; 
the brain the organ of thought but not the 
thinker. In the movements, groupings, electri- 
cal discharges of brain molecules we have the 
function of the brain, i. e., the actions it is fitted 
to perform, just as the chemical resolution of 
food is the function of the stomach ; or the con- 
ducting of stimulus, the function of the nerves. 
And since the brain finds its function in a class 
of actions separated by an "intellectually im- 
passable chasm' ' from consciousness and will, 
how can we rationally or consistently attribute 
these also to the brain as part of its function? 
The most we can legitimately say of conscious- 
ness and will is that they coexist with their 
physical concomitants while incapable of being 
brought into intelligible relation with them. 
Consequently we are wholly without warrant 
for affirming, as the materialists do, that dis- 

37 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

connection of brain and thought is impossible. 
By as much as the union of physical and psychi- 
cal states is a mystery, so their separation can 
scarcely be considered as beyond the pale of 
possibility. In other words, in the physics of 
the brain there is nothing that forecloses the 
question of a future life. In his widely read 
Harvard lecture on "Immortality" Professor 
William James declared the materialist's ob- 
jection to belief in immortality as shallow and 
worthless. It does not follow that the "I" 
which now uses the brain as its organ of thought 
will cease to exist when that instrument returns 
to dust. "Thought is not a function of the 
brain as steam is of the tea-kettle, but only as 
the color-fan of the spectrum is of the refract- 
ing prism." Our brains are the prisms, as it 
were, through which thought is transmitted. 
In other words, according to Professor James, 
the brain has a " transrnissive" as against a 
"productive" function. 

The brain then is only a machine for making 
our thoughts and emotions apparent to others. 
At death the machine breaks, but for all that 
science knows, the operator may still possess 
what he had to communicate. The materialist 
asks, what reason is there to expect that after 

38 



THE THESIS OF MATERIALISM 

the dissolution of brain matter, consciousness 
will remain, any more than that the wetness of 
water will remain after it has been resolved 
into hydrogen and oxygen? Assuredly, so far 
as the limits of our experience and knowledge 
are concerned, we have no warrant at all for 
such an expectation. But what does this ar- 
gument amount to so far as disproving immor- 
tality goes? Absolutely nothing. What right 
have we to assume that because we know 
thought only in association with brain, there 
can be no thought without brain? To say that 
because the universe has no brain of which we 
know anything, therefore there is no thought in 
the universe, would be obviously absurd. On a 
par with this falsely reasoned dependence of 
thought upon brain stands the celebrated ma- 
terialistic epigram of Buchner: "The brain se- 
cretes thought as the liver secretes bile" — a 
wholly undemonstrated proposition and based 
on the fallacious identifying of two distinct and 
unbridged sets of phenomena. As Clifford so 
forcefully expressed it, ' l the literal existence of 
thought in the brain is destitute of all experi- 
mental support." No one can see a thought, a 
sensation. Eefine and attenuate the atoms of 
gray matter in the brain as much as you please, 

39 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

your thought still remains utterly unlike the 
whitest, thinnest cerebral tissue. The most del- 
icate fibers of gray matter woven in the loom 
of science or of the imagination cannot be spun 
into an emotion. You can resolve a tear into 
oxygen, hydrogen, chlorin and sodium, but the 
mystery of grief remains as unexplained as 
ever. The difference between the tone of the 
marriage bell which begins happiness and that 
of the funeral toll which ends it cannot be stated 
in terms of "heat-waves" or the "concurrence 
of brain-atoms. ' ' 

Twenty-five years ago Haeckel broached what 
to many seemed the final scientific objection to 
belief in personal survival of death. His points 
were briefly these : All phenomena of the mind 
are inseparable from and products of physio- 
logical conditions. If, therefore, the cerebral 
centers of the brain are removed by surgery, or 
ruined by disease, all the corresponding mental 
activities will cease. When, at death, the cells 
which are the seat of thought and feeling cease 
their physiological activities, then the atoms of 
the brain separate and drop down into the 
lower unconscious states and all mental life 
terminates. The self is only a collective name 
for the aggregation of thought-producing atoms 

40 



THE THESIS OF MATERIALISM 

with mind-sides which therefore have no more 
reality or permanence than the spectrum colors 
of the summer rainbow. 

But since these startling statements were 
published a more startling discovery was made, 
in the light of which Haeckel's contention is 
robbed of all its cogency. This discovery is 
known as the "discontinuity of matter" and 
quite does away with Haeckel's cocksureness 
that death ends all. This discovery supple- 
ments that of the indestructibility of matter 
and of force, according to which no electrical 
volt, no chemical force, ever drops out of exist- 
ence. Their forms may change but the sum 
total of energy remains the same. To this we 
now add the fact of interatomic spaces in the 
brain, gaps between the atoms to which "mind- 
sides" have been attributed and whose sup- 
posed "aggregation" both "produced and 
maintained thought." No, these atoms do not 
stand in close touch; they have no actual con- 
tacts ; nay, more, so preponderant are the inter- 
atomic spaces that out of the cubic contents of 
a human brain only a few hundredths consist 
of material particles. How then shall these 
separated atoms unite thought with thought, 
link premise and conclusion, combine sensations 

41 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

of sight and touch? For all such mental pro- 
cesses we need something more unitary and con- 
tinuous than the " aggregation of the mind- 
sides' ' of isolated atoms. Modern physics has 
acquainted us with the fact that in our bodies 
is something more subtle than matter, some- 
thing that occupies more space than all its cor- 
poreal particles, something which forms a 
continuous substance, imponderable, imper- 
ceptible; something " analogous to the luminif- 
erous ether' ' or other substance which trans- 
mits solar energies; a "mentiferous ether" as 
an Oxford professor has called it, an " inter- 
mediary between cells and thought," the " im- 
material substratum of the self. ' ' 

Thus, while science enlarges the boundaries 
of our knowledge she at the same time widens 
the boundaries of our ignorance, interpreting 
an ever larger area of the unknown while re- 
vealing new depths to be explored. 

In the light, then, of what science has dis- 
proved as well as discovered, the faith in a fu- 
ture life cannot be set down as irrational or un- 
warrantable. Since science has proved that 
mental processes are only accompanied by, not 
produced by, material processes, that an im- 
passable gulf separates thought from the phys- 

42 



THE THESIS OF MATERIALISM 

ics of the brain, that the problem of the con- 
nection of soul with body is as insoluble in its 
modern form as it was in pre scientific ages — 
to quote Tyndall's phrase — no one need be 
ashamed of his faith. Until science can prove 
that thought is impossible apart from brain- 
physics, faith remains in possession of the 
ground. All we know is that brain and thought 
go together in our experience, without being 
able to say that the latter is caused by the 
former. Borrowing an illustration from Pro- 
fessor Adler, we may liken their relation to two, 
citizens, walking arm in arm into a town and 
through the town but parting company when 
they pass the city limits. So brain and thought 
come arm in arm, as it were, into the town of 
life but there is no known reason why they may 
not separate when they pass out of sight of the 
citizens because their relation is not one of 
cause and effect but only of concomitance or 
simultaneity. And while these facts prove that 
the faith in a future life is devoid of objective 
foundation, they do not disprove the faith. 
Nay more, it is inconceivable that any future 
advance in physical discovery can impugn it. 

Just here let me interject the statement that 
with materialists, as men, one can have no 

43 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

quarrel. I respect each according to his in- 
dividual character, for one may respect a 
thinker while repudiating his thought even as 
one may love a sinner while hating his sin. 
Many a materialist have I met, incorruptible, 
unselfish, humanitarian ; but materialism, in my 
judgment, is neither a science nor a philosophy 
but a reactionary theory following upon an ex- 
travagant transcendentalism. No longer is it 
left to theology to decry materialism. Science 
herself has sounded its death knell. Today it 
is as difficult to find a genuinely scientific cham- 
pion of its thesis as it was fifty years ago to 
find an opponent. 

EVOLUTION 

It remains to say a word concerning evolu- 
tion which is often strangely construed as syn- 
onymous with materialism and, hence, destruc- 
tive of the faith in a future life. But the truth 
is there is no necessary connection between the 
two. Not only is evolution not identical with 
materialism but it has not added an iota to the 
reasonableness of it. Evolution is an estab- 
lished law of Nature, materialism is a crude and 
unwarranted inference from that law, unwar- 
ranted because evolution is not self-explained 

44 



THE THESIS OF MATEKIALISM 

regardless of some originating or informing 
power. So far as the question of immortality 
stands related to the law of evolution we have 
to note that the accumulated evidence in sup- 
port of evolution neither disproves immortality 
nor establishes it as a legitimate inference 
therefrom. All that can be properly inferred 
from Nature's evolutionary process is a rea- 
soned probability that the outcome, whatever 
it be, will justify the process. As a reasoned 
probability, Leverrier, in 1845, announced the 
existence of an unknown planet. In the follow- 
ing year " Neptune' ' was seen and precisely 
where the astronomer had predicted its appear- 
ance. As a reasoned probability, Professor 
Eamsay affirmed the existence of a gas never 
yet discovered by any of the senses, and lo! 
"neon" appeared. Now just as the scientific 
world believed in the reality of both the planet 
and the gas before their discovery, so we may 
believe as a reasoned probability that the out- 
come of the evolutionary process will be worth 
all it cost. 

Modern astronomers tell us that our earth is 
dying and doomed to become "a frozen water- 
less waste" and the total earthly succession of 
living creatures come to an end. Has it, then, 

45 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

been developed, apparently, at almost infinite 
waste of effort, only to be abolished again be- 
fore it has attained to completeness, or does it 
shelter some indestructible element that shall 
survive the final decay of physical phenomena 1 
Unless something worth while shall survive this 
ultimate disaster evolution must be set down 
as a senseless fiasco and farce. If that process, 
in the course of which there appeared a Homer, 
a Plato, a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a 
Darwin, is to end in a harvest of corpses, leav- 
ing no permanent good behind, then we must 
liken the process to the act of a crazy sculptor 
who, after lifelong toil upon a magnificent mas- 
terpiece, broke it into fragments. Or we might 
compare the process to a drama with a pro- 
logue and a series of absorbingly interesting 
acts, in the last of which the lights go out and 
the whole thing vanishes like a dream. No man 
would create such a world; no man would be 
guilty of evolving such a system only to see it 
end in failure and chaos, the most hideous of 
mockeries. That the ultimate issue of the 
process will justify it is a reasoned probability. 
Beyond this we are not warranted in carrying 
our thought. Yet preachers, poets and even 
scientists have gone further, holding that im- 

46 



THE THESIS OF MATERIALISM 

mortality is a " logical necessity," given the 
fact of evolution. 

The lamented geologist, Le Conte, could think 
of no possible alternative but man's immortal- 
ity as the consummation of Nature's history. 
Without that "the beautiful cosmos would be 
precisely as if it had never been, an idle dream, 
an idiot-tale signifying nothing. ' ' 1 

Tennyson, whose "In Memoriam" was pub- 
lished nine years before Darwin's "Origin of 
Species," held the selfsame view. Contemplat- 
ing the age-long process of evolution the poet 
exclaimed : 

— And he, shall he, 
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
"Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 
"Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer . . . 

Who loved, who suffer 'd countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, — 
Be blown about the desert dust, 
Or seal'd within the iron hills? 

No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
That tare each other in their slime, 
Were mellow music match 'd with him. 

1 Le Conte : "Evolution in Relation to Religious Thought,' 5 " 
p. 329. 

47 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

Quite recently, a prominent preacher of this 
city expressed himself in still stronger terms. 
The facts of human existence " demonstrate, ' ' 
"establish," according to him, the reality of 
immortality. In a recent contribution to the 
Christian Register, he said : 

' lV 'Tf Immortality is nothing but a hope, a 
probability, a dream, then is the vast and splen- 
did structure of modern science, which no sane 
man thinks of questioning, nothing but a hope, 
a probability, a dream. The Scientist, although 
he does not know in actual experience, has a 
perfect right to accept as proved the reality of 
1 ether.' And in exactly the same way, the 
theologian, although he does not know in actual 
conscious experience, has a perfect right to ac- 
cept as proved the reality of the conception of 
Immortality. ' ' 

But the existence of an ocean of ether en- 
veloping the molecules of material bodies has 
been doubted or denied by eminent physicists, 1 
for the conception involves properties and re- 
lations of the ether hard to harmonize with the 
particulars of our knowledge concerning mat- 
ter. Even the "undulatory" theory of light is 
being questioned afresh and partial reversion 

1 Piske: "The Unseen World/' p. 20. 
48 



THE THESIS OF MATEEIALISM 

to the Newtonian "corpuscular" theory is, in 
some quarters, in vogue. And how can we 
justify the use of the words " established," 
" demonstrated," "proved," in connection with 
a possible future fact? Surely we see in these 
quoted sentences the same sort of overstate- 
ment that Carlyle made when he said of music 
that it "reveals the infinite." What music 
really does is to waken the emotions associated 
with the idea of the Divine. So the tracing of 
the evolutionary process and the contempla- 
tion of "the great facts of existence" awaken 
in us a powerful suggestion, a strong intimation 
of personal survival of death. But these facts 
cannot, without unwarranted abuse of the dic- 
tionary, be said to "establish" or "demon- 
strate" that survival. 

Moreover, we can conceive of the cosmic proc- 
ess leading to something other than individual 
immortality, though we cannot picture it ; some 
"far off, divine event" in nowise anthropo- 
morphic, making it of no consequence that we 
should individually endure. 

The most that can be legitimately claimed for 
the supreme discovery of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the law of evolution, is that it points to 
something other than nothingness as the final 

49 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

outcome of the age-long cosmic process. The 
question of fact, Does the real, personal I sur- 
vive the event of death as still real personal 1 1 
can be answered only by experience of that fact 
and experience of it is totally lacking. This 
is what John Fiske meant when he declared that 
his faith in the soul's immortality must be 
distinguished from his acceptance of the de- 
monstrable truths of science, thus holding with 
Kant that immortality is unsupported by de- 
monstrative evidence or proof beyond the pos- 
sibility of denial. The philosopher accepted it 
as a postulate of the " practical reason,' ' the 
highest good being, in his judgment, possible 
only on the hypothesis of the soul's immortality. 
Disembodied personality is certainly not in- 
conceivable and we cannot say it is impossible. 
But never has inconceivability been esteemed a 
criterion of truth, a basis on which to establish 
an hypothesis so that it warrants the affirma- 
tion of knowledge on the question at issue. 

Knowledge is the "identity in difference" of 
reason and experience and, however absolute 
the decree registered by reason in favor of im- 
mortality, we cannot actually know it till we 
have experienced it. 



IV 



THE ETHICAL ATTITUDE TOWARD MODERN 

OCCULTISM— SPIRITUALISM, PSYCHICAL 

RESEARCH, THEOSOPHY 

As defined in the Century Dictionary the 
word "occultism" means that which is hidden, 
not apparent on mere inspection, under cover, 
obscure. Accepted in this, its simple, original 
meaning, the term "occultism" may be conven- 
iently used to describe the group of three move- 
ments which we are to consider in their bearing 
upon the question of immortality. 

Occultism includes spiritualism, in so far as 
its central doctrine of "spirit-intercourse" is 
"not apparent on mere inspection" but needs 
clarification and verification. For the same 
reason, psychical research, dealing with the 
subliminal self, telepathy and other obscure 
phenomena, may be classified among occultisms. 
Theosophy, too, by as much as it was made 
synonymous with "Esoteric Buddhism" * and 

1 One of the best accounts of theosophy is to be found in 
a book by A. P. Sinnett, entitled "Esoteric Buddhism." 

51 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

a "Key" for its explication was furnished by 
its foundress, is rightly regarded as an example 
of modern occultism. It should be noted in 
passing, that the title "Esoteric Buddhism" 
has of late been abandoned by theosophists and 
for the excellent reason that the Buddhism of 
Gotama, the Buddha, was the very opposite of 
esoteric. Just before his death he said to his 
disciples : "I have preached the truth without 
making any distinction between esoteric and ex- 
oteric doctrine. I have no such thing as the 
closed fist of the teacher who keeps some things 
back." Esoteric teaching in Buddhism dates 
from several centuries after Gotama 's death. 
Moreover in the theosophical work just cited, 
all that Mr. Sinnett says concerning "astral 
body, "" animal-soul, ""atman," etc., is openly 
set forth in the "Yoga" philosophy, long since 
made accessible to English readers. 

To speak of modern occultism suggests the 
antithesis, ancient occultism. There were many 
occultisms in ancient. Egypt, Greece, Rome, 
and Palestine, and many of them bear resem- 
blance to those with which we are familiar. 
They all alike aimed to raise the souls of men 
above the transiency of perishable matter to an 
immortal life, salvation meaning escape from 

52 



ETHICS AND MODERN OCCULTISM 

the tyranny of an omnipresent fate and the as- 
surance of a life which death could not quench. 
The Eleusinian mysteries, the Orphic and Di- 
onysian cults granted their votaries the privi- 
lege of transcending the boundary of death, en- 
tering the very presence of the Gods and re- 
ceiving from them mystic communications. 
Among the ancient Jews in the days of their 
tribal organization, "divination" was a profes- 
sion and a kind of spiritualism obtained, wit- 
ness the story of Saul's intercourse, through a 
medium, with the deceased prophet Samuel. 
When Christianity was struggling for the reli- 
gious control of the Roman Empire there oc- 
curred an invasion of Syrian and Persian oc- 
cultisms, a swarm of quasi-religious rivals all 
entering in fierce competition for religious su- 
premacy. 

In the days of Caracalla lived Appollonius of 
Tyana whose mystic healing powers were such 
that the emperor worshiped him as a divine 
being. He made no use of drugs or other ma- 
terial healing agencies. He extended his art 
to absent treatments. He drew no distinction 
between functional and organic diseases since 
God is the healer and He is omnipotent. More- 
over, Appollonius held that any person might 

53 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

become an agent of the Divine Healer by en- 
tering upon a course of spiritual preparation 
and developing faculties not ordinarily em- 
ployed. 

Let these few illustrations suffice to indicate 
the prevalence of ancient occultisms having 
more or less kinship with those known in our 
own day. 

To avoid possible misunderstanding let me 
say at once that I am not a spiritualist, not a 
theosophist, not a Christian Scientist. I am 
not identified with any of the modern move- 
ments that partake more or less of an occult 
character. 

We shall confine our attention to three such 
movements, all alike conspicuous for their re- 
spective contributions to the belief in immor- 
tality : spiritualism, psychical research, and the- 
osophy. Each of these has offered a founda- 
tion of its own for the faith in human survival 
of death and therefore compels consideration in 
a course of lectures devoted to this question. 
But it will be well, if, by way of introduction, 
we consider the ethical attitude toward these 
occultisms, more especially as I find that among 
intelligent, respectable people, unwarranted 
opinions and sentiments, the product of preju- 

54 



ETHICS AND MODERN OCCULTISM 

dice born of ignorance, still obtain regarding 
them. 

We shall the more justly evaluate the bases 
on which they build the belief in immortality if 
we first fix in our minds and hearts the spirit 
that should control our judgment of their re- 
spective claims. 

Pray do not confuse what is meant by the 
ethical attitude with the attitude of the Ethical 
Movement. Let it be clearly understood that 
by the latter we mean strict neutrality toward 
these movements even as toward all open or 
debatable questions. It would be suicide for 
the Ethical Movement to commit itself to the 
distinctive position taken by Spiritualism, The- 
osophy, or the Society for Psychical Research. 
Members of an Ethical Society are entirely free 
to belong to any religious or occult congrega- 
tion they choose, only they must not seek to 
make the society sponsor for their particular 
views. Membership in an Ethical Society 
means simply devotion to the moral life, recog- 
nition of the supremacy of the ethical end over 
all others that may be named, self-dedication 
to the "ever-increasing knowledge, love and 
practice of the right," let the members' theo- 
logical and philosophical beliefs be what they 

55 



FAITH IN A FUTUKE LIFE 

may. Friendly, receptive, hospitable toward 
all other religious movements the Ethical 
Movement certainly is, but it depends for 
its very life on maintaining a wholly noncom- 
mittal position toward them all. It cannot be 
for or against any of them because the price- 
less freedom of the Ethical fellowship forbids. 
Every leader of an Ethical Society is perfectly 
free to discuss such movements from the plat- 
form, but his individual views commit no one 
but himself. For him to commit the society to 
his position would be to undermine its cardinal 
characteristic of freedom. When, therefore, 
we speak of the attitude of the Ethical Move- 
ment toward the cults now under consideration 
we have reference to its complete neutrality. 
To this might be added its radicalism. For the 
Ethical Movement in its approach to such sys- 
tems of thought is much more interested in 
their roots than in their fruits. In the case of 
Spiritualism, for instance, it concentrates atten- 
tion on the alleged phenomena of spirit inter- 
course rather than on any formula intended to 
explain them. In the case of psychical re- 
search, its prime concern would be with the liv- 
ing medium rather than with the departed com- 
municator. If Christian Science were the sub- 

56 



ETHICS AND MODERN OCCULTISM 

ject of its investigation, the Ethical Movement 
would again be radical in its attitude, i. e., it 
would go down below the mode of healing to the 
real nature of the disease to be cured, seeking 
to know that rather than spend itself at once on 
the proposed remedy which, however excellent, 
might not be applicable to the disease in question. 
But now, by the ethical attitude toward these 
movements something much more general and 
fundamental is meant. It is the spirit in which 
one who would understand and estimate them 
should approach them. That spirit can be de- 
scribed by a single word, appreciation, a com- 
posite of justice and love, one to which man, 
through the ages, has been slowly climbing ; the 
spirit that blushes at persecution, disdains mere 
forbearance and is dissatisfied even with toler- 
ance, w T hich to many seems the very acme of 
spiritual attainment. But no, tolerance is not 
the loveliest flower on the rosebush of liberal- 
ism, not the ne plus ultra of attitudes. Toler- 
ance implies a certain measure of concession. 
We tolerate what we can't help but would put 
out of the way if we could. Tolerance has an 
air of patronizing condescension about it. He 
who tolerates affects an air of offensive supe- 
riority that is irresistibly resented. 

57 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

Tolerance is the willing consent to let other 
people hold opinions different from one's own. 
Appreciation is eagerness to do full justice to 
their opinions, the generous assumption that 
they have something of worth which may enrich 
one's own thought and life, the sincere convic- 
tion that if the system they represent contains 
error, it is kept alive only because of the truth- 
germ which it hides. Appreciation is the spirit 
which likens the hundred and more sects of the 
Christian religion to the stops and pedals of a 
vast organ, some stressing the essential, others 
the ornamental notes, none of itself yielding the 
full-orbed music, but their harmonious blend- 
ing producing the symphony of human aspira- 
tion and faith. Appreciation is the spirit which 
turns to the founders of the great historic re- 
ligions not with a polemical but with an eclec- 
tic purpose, asking of each : What have you to 
offer? What can we borrow from your gospel 
to enlarge and deepen our modern life? In- 
stead of singling out Moses or Jesus as though 
he alone had all the truth the world needs, ap- 
preciation bows reverently before them all, 
esteeming each according to the truth he has to 
teach and the inspiration that may be drawn 
from the story of his life. 

58 



ETHICS AND MODERN OCCULTISM 

Similarly toward spiritualism, psychical re- 
search, and theosophy the spirit of appreciation 
exhibits a corresponding regard, granting to 
each a respectful hearing, persuaded that its 
thesis has some measure of truth and the more 
unpromising its appearance the more diligent 
the search. Instead of rudely relegating these 
movements to the limbo of the ridiculous and ir- 
rational, the spirit of appreciation will en- 
deavor patiently to determine what life-giving 
elements they contain, what needs they satisfy, 
what wants they supply, all the while remember- 
ing with modesty the vast firmament of thought 
under which we move, and watchful for each 
new star that the guiding heavens may reveal. 

And when we pass from the exposition of 
what these systems stand for to a criticism of 
their respective claims, the ethical attitude re- 
quires that we criticize not only with logic but 
also with love. Again and again has it hap- 
pened that men armed with logic and the facts, 
with rhetoric and a rich vocabulary, have yet 
carried no conviction because they lacked "the 
one thing needful, ' ' because they spoke not ' ' the 
truth in love. ' ' I borrow this phrase from the 
New Testament Epistle to the Ephesians, writ- 
ten to the Christian converts at Ephesus in 

59 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

Asia Minor. Having been but a short time be- 
fore converted from the religion of the Eoman 
empire to Christianity, they were filled with 
that enthusiasm and zeal which usually charac- 
terize converts in the first weeks of their con- 
version. There was imminent danger that in 
the fervor and glow of their reaction from the 
Roman religion they would speak disdainfully 
and contemptuously of the old faith from which 
they had withdrawn. Consequently the writer 
of the epistle, a follower of the Apostle Paul, 
beseeches them to abstain "from all malice and 
wrath and anger, speaking the truth in love." 
In that final phrase the ethical attitude is suc- 
cinctly expressed. Ridicule, vituperation, ma- 
licious epithets, wrathful words, on the lips of 
critics, would-be reformers, protestors against 
error, carry no conviction, correct no error, ad- 
vance no truth. The experience of centuries 
has proved that 'tis to the combined agency of 
sincerity and love, quite as much as to that of 
reason and the facts, that the world owes what- 
ever conversions have been made from error to 
truth. There is but one way to abolish super- 
stition and that is by absorbing and assimilat- 
ing whatever truth there is in it. The way to 
suppress quackery, whether in medicine, phi- 

60 



ETHICS AND MODERN OCCULTISM 

losophy, or religion, is not merely to punish 
the quacks, but to do in a scientific way what 
they try to do after the manner of the char- 
latan. 

Not long ago a clergyman of this city pub- 
lished an article on Thomas Paine. I note that 
several times he referred to the author of the 
"Age of Reason " as "Tom," "infidel," "athe- 
ist." Did that minister think he was helping 
the cause of Presbyterianism by heaping op- 
probrious epithets on his victim? Would not 
his argument have carried more weight, not to 
mention Christian dignity and grace, if instead 
of vilifying the man he hates he had said what 
he regarded as the truth, in love? Were 
Thomas Paine to return to earth this preacher 
would owe him a most humble apology. As it 
is, he owes such an apology to the American 
people for whose welfare the sincere, honest, 
patriotic, public-spirited Paine gave the power 
of his pen and voice ; for it was out of the heart 
of Thomas Paine that the American doctrine 
of independence was born. He was the first to 
use the phrase, "United States," the first to 
insist that they must be independent. 

When Colonel Ingersoll with bold, defiant 
iconoclasm, tore down the walls of superstition 

61 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

which Christian dogmatism had reared, he took 
a brave part in the gigantic task of leading the 
faith of the past on to the faith of the future. 
But alas, his unscholarly utterances, his unwar- 
ranted ridicule and misplaced wit created a vast 
deal of harm which it will require years of calm, 
temperate, kindly utterance of the truth to re- 
pair. A raw rationalism that speaks with flip- 
pant and irreverent tongue never yet won its 
way to human hearts, whereas a ripe rational- 
ism, born of scholarship and reverent regard 
for the fact of evolution, never fails to produce 
a wholesome effect and to promote the cause of 
truth. 

"When the late, lamented Heber Newton ad- 
dressed a thousand young men on the influence 
of this Goliath he did not descend to the in- 
dignity of calling him "Bob," or "the Colonel" 
or "blasphemer.' ' He religiously refrained 
from the use of all insulting epithets and spoke 
his message with a dignity, sincerity and love 
that could not but carry conviction. The re- 
sult was that those young men received a just 
and discerning estimate of what the great ora- 
tor had done for the world. 

If ignorance and prejudice blind a man's eyes 
to what the Ethical Movement really stands 

62 



ETHICS AND MODERN OCCULTISM 

for, we may try to show it forth by attacking 
his ignorance and prejudice but we shall be 
doomed to failure. Only as we anoint the blind 
eyes with the salve of our sincerity and touch 
the darkened heart with the light and warmth 
of our love can we succeed. Every successful 
reformer has had sincerity and love at the heart 
of his reform. These are the two angels that 
must ever guide us, Eefuse their company, 
repudiate their lead, abjure their inspiration 
and we enlighten no souls, establish no reform. 

A friend has just sent me a book entitled 
"The Eeligio-Medical Masquerade," written by 
a Boston lawyer. Here are the opening sen- 
tences : 

"Christian Science is the most shallow and 
sordid and wicked imposture of the ages. Upon 
a substratum of lies a foundation of false pre- 
tense has been laid. Never before has the world 
witnessed a masquerade like that of Christian 
Science. The founder of this pretended re- 
ligion, this bogus healing system, has through- 
out her whole long life, been in every particular 
precisely antithetical to Christ. ' ' Obviously in 
these heated terms the author describes, not 
Christian Science, but his own irritation, im- 
potence and unworthiness. The temptation to 

63 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

indulge in vituperative epithets is very strong 
and subtle, but it is always a positive detriment 
to the progress of truth and to the moral de- 
velopment of him who yields to it. For not 
only does this practice develop in him the evil 
qualities conveyed in his invectives but it also 
reduces his capacity for dispassionate judg- 
ment, besides making him increasingly unsym- 
pathetic, uncharitable and unlovely. Vitupera- 
tion is like the boomerang which returns upon 
its projector. Believing this profoundly and 
intensely and having sought for years to profit 
from it, permit me now to say that if in suc- 
ceeding lectures any criticism of mine on any 
of these movements be construed as manifesting 
an unkindly or contemptuous spirit it will be 
misconstrued ; and it will be in regretted contra- 
diction of my purpose if I let slip a single care- 
less word that shall wound the reverence of 
even the most sensitive soul. 



THE CARDINAL CLAIM OF SPIRITUALISM 

The ethical attitude toward spiritualism, as 
indicated in the preceding chapter, requires that 
we take it seriously and not assume that there 
are any finalities or infallibilities precluding 
the possibility of its possessing any truth. 
Whatever our estimate of the movement may 
be we are bound to acknowledge that it has 
made the world its debtor by its repudiation of 
those grotesque beliefs about death and the 
hereafter that were transmitted from medieval- 
ism to the modern world. If we no longer look 
on death as a demon, a curse, a symbol of divine 
wrath, if we regard a hereafter of endless 
psalm singing and harp playing as altogether 
devoid of attractiveness, we have to thank the 
spiritualists for their special service in pro- 
moting these salutary changes in religious 
thought. 

The ethical attitude makes a further require- 
ment of us. It is that we state the position and 

65 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

claim of spiritualism as fairly and as strongly 
as a representative would, avoiding both under- 
statement and exaggeration together with 
everything that savors of disparagement or con- 
tempt. Bigotry has no head and therefore can- 
not reason logically. Bigotry has no heart and 
therefore cannot feel tenderly. Who would not 
exchange a hope for a demonstration, were it 
possible? And who would think of foreclosing 
investigation by pronouncing demonstration to 
be impossible? Because many of the phe- 
nomena of spiritualism have been proved fraud- 
ulent, dare we, on that account, turn our backs 
upon all? What moral justification can there 
be for those thinkers, who, with a dilettante 
air, spurn scientific investigation of spiritistic 
phenomena ? Or what warrant can there be for 
asserting that "the question of immortality is 
degraded by approaching it through the chan- 
nel of these phenomena ?" In all probability 
coming generations will be disposed to attach 
great importance to the belief in a hereafter 
only as it shall be reinforced by evidential 
means. Special significance therefore attaches 
to careful examination of whatever purports to 
be proof of human survival of death. No al- 
ternative is open for the candid mind but to ex- 

66 



SPIRITUALISM 

amine the alleged proof and determine what 
measure of reliance, if any, may be put upon it. 
I, for one, cannot ignore the fact that certain 
scientific investigators of acknowledged dis- 
tinction have, as a result of their researches, 
gone over to the spiritistic hypothesis and based 
upon it their faith in a future life. I cannot 
ignore the fact that some years ago the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, 
the foremost organization of its kind in the 
world, saw fit to find a place for spiritualism 
among the subjects to be discussed at its annual 
sessions. Nor, again, can I overlook the fact 
that there are certain spiritistic phenomena 
which still continue to tax the intelligence and 
baffle the interpretative skill of skeptics who, 
for years, have vainly striven to prove them 
fraudulent and at last felt compelled to admit 
their genuineness, whatever the explanation of 
them might be. Despite all the fraud which it 
was thought would relegate the new "ism" to 
the realm of extinct religions, it is on the in- 
crease, constantly welcoming new recruits to 
its ranks. Statistics show that there are over 
one hundred thousand avowed spiritualists in 
some five hundred societies, owning property 
worth two millions of dollars or more. Besides 

67 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

those who openly avow their identification with 
spiritualism there are hundreds, perhaps thou- 
sands, who confess their sympathy with it only 
to themselves and to intimate friends. Hence 
no one can tell the precise number of adherents 
that spiritualism may claim. These facts chal- 
lenge attention because they prove that in 
spiritualism there is something that thou- 
sands find satisfying, something not furnished 
by other religious organizations. Therefore, 
though I am not a spiritualist, I absolutely re- 
pudiate the attitude of indifference as well as 
the dogmatic religion and the dogmatic science 
which dare to fix the limits of possible knowl- 
edge of post-mortem conditions. 

What is the cardinal claim of spiritualism? 
To answer that question authoritatively we 
must consult the constitution of the National 
Spiritualists Association which registers the 
collective vote of all spiritualists in the United 
States as to what spiritualism stands for. Ar- 
ticles IV and V of the "National Declaration 
of Principles" read as follows: "We affirm 
that the existence and personal identity of the 
individual continue after the change called 
death.' ' "We affirm that communication with 
the so-called dead is a fact scientifically proven 

68 



SPIRITUALISM 

by the phenomena of spiritualism. ' ' From this 
it is clear that the cardinal doctrine of spiritual- 
ism, the one on which the movement hinges 
{car do y a hinge), is belief in personal immortal- 
ity based on spirit-intercourse, i. e., the commun- 
ication of departed spirits with living persons. 
Differ as spiritualists may on theological ques- 
tions or on the explanations of spirit-inter- 
course, all unite in affirming such intercourse 
to be a proven fact, a truth established by actual 
experience. They base their belief in a future 
life not on scripture texts, not on unverifiable 
intuitions, but on facts which, they claim, can 
be investigated by well-established methods. 

The natural history of the movement dates 
from 1848, when two sisters, Mary and Kate 
Fox, in the town of Hydeville, N. Y., heard 
rappings and were promptly put into communi- 
cation with alleged spirits who directed them 
to the cellar, where the skeleton of a murdered 
man was found. Under the guardianship of a 
Miss Fish, these two sisters traveled and gave 
public exhibitions of spiritistic phenomena. 
And while on the one hand the unbelieving 
made fun of the little Foxes with their sister 
Fish, on the other hand, there were those who 
rejoiced that now, at last, and out of the mouths 

69 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

of children, materialism had been utterly con- 
founded. 

Two years later (in 1850), Daniel Douglas 
Home, a Scotch emigrant, was observed to be in 
possession of strange < 'mediumistic' , and other 
occult powers, causing great excitement in both 
Europe and America. Soon other persons, 
similarly endowed, appeared and their " psy- 
chic' ' phenomena were thrown into the cauldron 
which the little Fox sisters had set bubbling. 
Small wonder then that a new form of religious 
organization was forthwith created. It grew 
with astonishing rapidity, gaining in fifty years 
more converts than Christianity had made in 
the first three hundred years of its existence. 

But now, while the direct and immediate 
cause of the rise of spiritualism was none other 
than this succession of strange phenomena, the 
indirect, remote, ultimate cause lay in the spir- 
itual famine which was superinduced by sci- 
entific discoveries, biblical criticism, and phil- 
osophical materialism. These combined agen- 
cies had robbed the popular religion of its old 
familiar sources of consolation without offer- 
ing a substitute. The doctrine of spirit-inter- 
course supplied the chief lack. Personal im- 
mortality, attested by actual communication of 

70 



SPIRITUALISM 

living persons with those deceased — this was 
the manna provided by spiritualism for the 
soul-starvation of the time. 

Even to the skeptic, the agnostic, the mate- 
rialist, the new movement made its appeal. It 
said to them : See, I bring you not Bible texts, 
not vague surmises or mere intimations or an 
intuition ; I bring you evidence ; judge for your- 
selves the worth of the proof of personal sur- 
vival of death which the phenomena furnish. 
But, in its early enthusiasm and zeal, spiritual- 
ism went too far. Like other movements in the 
first days of their success, spiritualism overshot 
the mark. It attributed all strange phenomena 
to the agency of spirits. Thereupon, what 
might be called a restraining injunction was 
served by the Society for Psychical Eesearch, 
resulting in a reduction of the number of phe- 
nomena hitherto ascribed to spirit agency. But 
of this more in the next chapter. 

The popular objections frequently urged 
against the spiritistic hypothesis need not de- 
tain us long. They are easily answered. Let 
me state and briefly refute the more important 
of them. 

"Why do not the spirits come to us directly, 
instead of through a medium ?" Perhaps be- 

71 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

cause we are not sensitive enough. One might 
as well ask: Why doesn't a telegraphic mes- 
sage come over a string instead of over a wire 1 
We are not justified in denying a thing simply 
because we cannot explain it. 

"Why do not the spirits come at once, when 
summoned by the medium V 9 Surely it would 
be deplorable were our departed friends not 
preoccupied, idly waiting to be summoned by a 
medium. If they do still live we share Mrs. 
Phelps' conviction that they must be engaged 
in useful activity of some sort x and this would 
explain their failing to make immediate re- 
sponse. 

"Why, if genuine, are the phenomena so re- 
cent! " They who ask that question betray 
their ignorance of history. Spiritistic phe- 
nomena are anything but recent; 'tis only the 
scientific study of them that is recent. Spiri- 
tistic phenomena are as old as man. Tylor, in 
his "Primitive Culture," makes mention of 
them as known to primitive man. The Old 
Testament records the case of King Saul com- 
municating with the departed prophet Samuel 
by the aid of a medium. 2 In the New Testa- 

*E. S. Phelps: "Gates Ajar." 
2 1 Sam. 28. 

72 



SPIRITUALISM 

ment we read of a phantasmal appearance of 
Jesus to the Apostle Paul, the latter hearing 
out of a bright light in the sky the words ' ' Saul, 
Saul, why dost thou persecute me?" 1 To many 
of the early followers of Jesus it was certain 
that he had risen from Sheol and that he had 
been seen alive. 

"Very odd it is that, if genuine, the phe- 
nomena should be disputed." Well, I suspect 
that Galileo thought it rather odd that astron- 
omers should dispute the reality of the moons 
of Jupiter. No doubt Harvey thought it very 
odd that the doctors of his day should dispute 
the circulation of the blood; Darwin, too, must 
have deemed it very odd that only one man in 
the United States, Professor Asa Gray, should 
have championed his discovery of natural se- 
lection as explaining in part the origin of spe- 
cies. 

"Why are the reported messages mostly gib- 
berish V 9 Assuming that they are such, that 
is no reason for denying their reality. Sense 
or nonsense, they have to be accounted for.. 
Since this course of lectures was announced, I 
have received in my daily mail considerable 
correspondence of a mixed character. Because 

1 Acts 9:4. 

73 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

some of the letters contain what might perhaps 
be called " gibberish,' ' does it follow that they 
came from nobody? Moreover, the trivial 
character of the communications is not neces- 
sarily to be ascribed to "an abnormal condi- 
tion' ' of the alleged spirit, for the abnormality 
may inhere in the medium's mind at the time 
the message is being transmitted to the sitter. 
In the case of an insane person we infer in- 
sanity from what he says and we have our 
verification at first hand, whereas in the case of 
the alleged spirit we have to take the word of 
the medium and without any proof that the al- 
leged discarnate personality actually exists. 
It may therefore well be that the disappointing 
character of most of the reported messages is 
due to some abnormality or enfeeblement of the 
medium in the hour of communication. 

Add to all this the probable transit of the 
message (if it comes at all) in the form of men- 
tal images or pictures (which the medium de- 
scribes), rather than in precise words which the 
medium can repeat. And if these images were 
of a kind wholly unfamiliar to the medium, this 
would account not only for the fragmentary and 
often meaningless character of the reported 
messages, but also for the failure of the medium 

74 



SPIRITUALISM 

to state anything intelligible concerning the 
manner of life in the beyond. Thus a further 
objection to the spiritualist's position is rea- 
sonably met. And if the counter-objection be 
urged that this notion of mental images passing 
from an extraneous source through a medium 
to a sitter is wholly conjectural, the obvious 
answer is that the mysterious facts stare us in 
the face and the spiritistic explanation is at 
least reasonable and, we may add, more ac- 
ceptable in the present state of our knowledge, 
than any of the alternative hypotheses that have 
been proposed. 

"How seldom the spirits tell us what we want 
to know!" But this may well be the sitter's 
fault. If he is foolish enough to consult a 
medium expecting information that cannot rea- 
sonably be given, he deserves to be disap- 
pointed. You consult a "business" medium to 
find out whether it is wise to buy fifty shares of 
"Steel Common," or, perhaps, a block of "Mex- 
ican Petroleum." But what reason can there 
be for supposing that an ordinary, average per- 
son who has departed this life should be able 
to give you the desired advice, any more than 
an ordinary, inexperienced person still here on 
earth! If you could be certain that the me- 

75 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

dium is connecting you with, let us say, the late 
Mr. Pierpont Morgan, or with the late Mr. H. 
H. Rogers, there would be some justification 
for your visit to the medium. It is irrational 
to suppose that anyone who has passed into 
"the life beyond' ' is thereby qualified to give 
you a "tip," regardless of what his calling was 
while here on earth. 

The Roman Catholic cardinal who frowned 
upon spiritualism, not, as he said, "because it 
is mere foolishness ' ' but because the spirits are 
"wicked and depraved/ ' overlooked the fact 
that he could well afford to be indifferent to the 
moral character of the spirits if only he could 
be certain that they were spirits. 

Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy in her ' l Science and 
Health' ' has devoted a chapter to "Spiritual- 
ism vs. Christian Science.' ' On page 74 we 
read: "The so-called dead and the living can- 
not commune together for they are in separate 
states of existence or consciousness." But how 
can Mrs. Eddy know that they are? Whether 
or no they can commune is precisely the ques- 
tion at issue. 

Further on in the same chapter we find it 
stated that "without the intercession of mate- 
rial personalities called * spirits,' spiritualism 

76 



SPIKITUALISM 

has no basis on which to build. ' ' But when, or 
by whom, were spirits ever conceived as "ma- 
terial personalities"? So to designate them is 
to do violence to the ethics of interpretation, 
for no spiritualist would indorse this designa- 
tion. 

Again, it has been urged that ' ' so much fraud 
has been perpetrated as, necessarily, to dis- 
credit the whole movement." 

It is true that in 1851 the rappings of the 
Fox sisters were explained in terms of "dis- 
located toe-joints" and that in 1888 one of the 
sisters gave a demonstration of just how the 
rappings were produced. It is true that in 
1887, under the auspices of the University of 
Pennsylvania and by the generous financial aid 
of a Mr. Seybert of Philadelphia, a scientific 
investigation of a number of spiritistic phe- 
nomena was conducted resulting in the revela- 
tion, by this Seybert Commission, of a vast 
deal of fraud. In the course of its procedure 
it exposed the fraudulent methods practiced by 
Slade, the celebrated medium and slate per- 
former. Professor H. H. Furness, a member 
of the commission, showed how mucilage had 
been used by a medium to restore to its original 
condition a sealed letter and how, in another 

77 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

instance, the wax with which the envelope was 
sealed had been broken. But now, on the other 
hand, it is equally true that certain scientific 
men of the highest rank found themselves face 
to face with another group of phenomena, 
wholly free from fraud, and of such a nature as 
to warrant their acceptance of the spiritistic 
hypothesis. To these scientists and the phe- 
nomena in question we shall return in the next 
chapter. Suffice it now if we simply note that 
no number of communications from a world 
beyond could possibly prove the* universality of 
survival. We cannot infer that if any indi- 
viduals survive, then all must do so. 

So far, then, as popular objections to the 
claim of spiritualism are concerned, it is clear 
that they have no weight. 

And while there are eminent scientists who 
have been so impressed by the highest types of 
psychic phenomena as to see in spiritism the 
only satisfying explanation of them, it should 
be noted that over against these scientists stand 
others of equal repute and ability who have de- 
clared themselves not yet convinced, not yet 
prepared to indorse the claim of spiritualism. 
And the grounds of their refusal to commit 
themselves are chiefly the following: (1) that 

78 



SPIKXTUALISM 

psychology is still in its infancy, or at most, in 
its childhood; (2) that the whole field of psychic 
operations needs to be more fully explored; (3) 
that all the resources which might serve as ex- 
planations have not yet been exhausted; and 
(4) that we should never fall back on any 
supramundane means of explanation until we 
have absolutely done with terrestrial sources. 
Certainly, no one ought to accept a theory that 
is not in itself convincing or just, because it has 
no rival. No one ought to accept a theory 
merely because it is the only one available, for 
that would be to make of the theory an opiate 
for the uneasiness of suspended judgment. 
Alas, that in these days of widespread liking 
for precipitancy, for short cuts, and quick re- 
sults, the difficulty of suspending judgment is 
enormously increased. The American " pro- 
moter" has for his motto, "Get rich quick/' I 
know Christian Scientists whose motto is, ' ' Get 
health quick/' and Socialists whose cry is, "Get 
social health quick/' So there are people who 
have espoused occultism, hoping thereby to get 
knowledge of the hereafter, quick. Strange as 
it may seem, even the realm of science is not 
free from men with a passion for settling upon 
an explanation rather than suspending judg- 

79 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

ment till all the evidence is in. When Kepler 
discovered that the planets moved not in circles 
but in ellipses, he had no means of accounting 
for that strange phenomenon. Yet he felt bound 
to furnish an explanation for it. Accordingly 
he broached the belief that each of the planets 
is attended by an angel, who personally con- 
ducts the planet round in its elliptical orbit! 
Soon, however, the law of gravitation became 
more thoroughly understood and when it was 
found equal to accounting for the elliptical 
movement, the guiding angels were dismissed. 
Similarly in the field of psychic phenomena, it 
may yet be possible, through increased knowl- 
edge, to dismiss the spiritistic hypothesis in 
favor of terrene agencies adequate to explain 
them. But here we come to the threshold of 
our next subject, the Counter-claim of Psychical 
Eesearch. 



VI 

THE COUNTERCLAIM OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

The claim of spiritualism to have demon- 
strated the reality of life after death rests on 
a number and variety of psychic phenomena. In- 
cluded among these are clairvoyance and clair- 
audience, i. e., the seeing and hearing of what 
is not discernible by the senses, apparitions, 
ghosts, the hauntings of houses and places — 
above all, the phenomena of mediumship. 
A medium may be defined as a person who 
seems to lend himself (or herself) to some other 
being or beings, imperceptible to our senses, in 
order that they may manifest themselves to us. 
We have seen that the attitude toward these 
phenomena has been anything but uniform. 
Some persons have accepted them all at their 
face value ; others have entertained doubt as to 
their genuineness; others, again, have rejected 
them in toto as products of a diseased imag- 
ination. Yet, notwithstanding the doubts and 
the denials, the phenomena continued to occur 

81 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

and also the disputes as to their reality, until, 
in the last quarter of the last century, it was 
felt to be a crying shame, a "scandal of the 
age," that no systematic, organized effort was 
anywhere being made, either to determine the 
validity of the phenomena or to settle the dis- 
putes. Certain eminent scientists felt them- 
selves challenged to recognize and explain the 
phenomena or forever after hold their peace. 
And so it came about that in February, 1882, 
in London, England, there was formed the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research, the first organized 
attempt to undertake systematic investigation 
of these mysterious phenomena. Three years 
later an American branch of the parent society 
was formed. Each organization has published, 
annually, a volume of Proceedings. 

The popular notion of the personnel of these 
societies is expressed in such phrases as the 
following: "a soft-headed, easily-duped lot"; 
' ' harebrained searchers, " " miracle-lovers, ' ' 
' ' novelty-cravers. ' ' 

But a mere glance at the names of the men 
who have officered the societies proves how mis- 
taken that popular notion is. I doubt if there 
is another organization in the world that can 
boast of so many hard-headed, cautious, critical 

82 



PSYCHICAL EESEAKCH 

members; men and women dominated by that 
deep-seated skepticism which is exacting in the 
extreme in its demand for evidence. 

The first president of the parent society was 
Professor Henry Sidgwick of Cambridge Uni- 
versity, a man noted for his absolute impar- 
tiality in discussing evidence and for his con- 
stitutional caution in coming to conclusions on 
debatable subjects. 

The second president was the Eight Honor- 
able Arthur J. Balfour, author of ' l The Foun- 
dation of Belief," a work which instantly 
stamped him as a hard-headed thinker with a 
rare capacity for sifting evidence and for hold- 
ing his judgment in suspense. 

The third president was Sir William Crookes, 
inventor of the Crookes tube, which played an 
important part in the development of the X- 
rays ; a man who, for over thirty years, stood 
in the very vanguard of the English scientific 
world. 

When Gladstone, England's illustrious prime 
minister, was invited to become an honorary 
member of the society, he, the controversialist 
(with Huxley), the Christian apologist and bib- 
lical exegete, in his letter of acceptance said 
that he regarded the work of this society as 

83 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

"the most important work that is being done 
in the world, by far the most important. ' J 

Not least in the long line of eminent men who 
have occupied the presidential chair is Sir 
Oliver Lodge, a physicist of the first rank, who 
conditioned his interest in spiritistic phe- 
nomena by their susceptibility to treatment by 
scientific methods of investigation. He held 
that this method is as applicable in the realm 
of spiritual realities as in that of physical. He 
positively refused to ally himself with the ag- 
nosticism that affirms the inability of science to 
reach truth in this realm. In his recent address 
before the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science he said: "I am one of those 
who think that the methods of science are not 
so limited in their scope as has been thought; 
that they can be applied much more widely, and 
that the psychic region can be studied and 
brought under law too. Allow us anyhow to 
make this attempt. Give us a fair field. Let 
those who prefer the materialistic hypothesis 
by all means develop their thesis as far as they 
can; but let us try what we can do in the psy- 
chical region, and see which wins." 

Among those who have officered the Ameri- 
can branch the following may be mentioned: 

84 



PSYCHICAL EESEAECH 

Professor Langley, who for so many years was 
head of the Smithsonian Institute at Washing- 
ton; Professor William James, of Harvard 
University, one of the clearest and closest 
thinkers of our time, and author of the most 
readable book on psychology that has yet been 
produced; Professor James H. Hyslop, of Col- 
umbia University, a man to whom we all are 
deeply indebted for having contributed to our 
literature a most illuminating essay on the So- 
ciety for Psychical Eesearch; Dr. Eichard 
Hodgson, of Boston, the sincerely and deeply 
lamented secretary, a man whose genius for 
detecting fraud has been surpassed by no one, 
whether at home or abroad, a man who declared 
it to be his fixed purpose to explain, if possible, 
all psychic phenomena without resorting to the 
spiritistic hypothesis. He felt bound, as a sci- 
entist, to operate every other theory until it 
broke, before admitting that any supramundane 
force was at work. 

Let these illustrations suffice to indicate the 
caliber and character of the personnel of the 
Society for Psychical Eesearch, at home and 
abroad. 

The object of the society, it should be care- 
fully noted, is not to prove or disprove any 

85 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

theory, but to investigate and report upon psy- 
chic phenomena and the persons identified with 
them. A paragraph from the official prospec- 
tus states precisely the purpose of the organ- 
ization. "The society, as a body, was not and 
is not committed to any views upon the various 
problems with which it proposes to deal. It 
aims to approach these problems without preju- 
dice or prepossession of any kind and in the 
same spirit of open inquiry which has enabled 
science to solve so many problems once not less 
obscure nor less hotly debated.' ' 

Here, for example, is a human mind in what 
is called the trance-state, absolutely oblivious 
to everything that transpires in the external 
world. In that state this mind tries to reveal 
the identity of someone no longer living on 
earth. The name, or part of the name, is given, 
amid much incoherent automatic talk. Fea- 
tures are described, incidents recalled, seem- 
ingly to give assurance that this person still 
lives. The problem is, whence these trance- 
utterances? Do they come from the departed, 
and if not, how shall they be explained, and 
what light, if any, do they throw on the ques- 
tion of life after death? Accordingly the so- 
ciety addressed itself to systematic study of 

86 



PSYCHICAL BESEABCH 

spiritistic phenomena. On the one hand it 
conducted experiments with clairvoyants, clair- 
audiants, mediums and also with hypnotic sub- 
jects, i. e., persons in a psychophysical condi- 
tion of increased suggestibility. On the other 
hand, it collected data concerning hallucina- 
tions, apparitions, and ghosts, with a view to 
determining their real character and the in- 
ferences to be drawn from them. 

The question at once suggests itself: Are 
these investigations and experiments worth 
while, or, have they merely an intellectual, spec- 
ulative interest? Were the latter the case and 
one felt that no serious practical importance at- 
taches to all this research work, how could a 
lecture on the subject be justified? Orthodox 
science, I know, has poured considerable ridi- 
cule upon the undertakings of the society and 
even branded them "preposterous' ' and " per- 
nicious.' ' On the other hand, heretics, like 
Crookes and Lodge and Wallace, have found in 
certain results of research a new reason for 
believing in immortality. Most of us, perhaps, 
are unable to share that view, yet we must not 
let our lack of agreement or of sympathy there- 
with blind us to the real worth- whileness of the 
work of the society. 

87 



FAITH IN A FUTUBE LIFE 

Let me indicate some of the respects in which 
this work has been justified: (1) It has set- 
tled many a dispute concerning the genuineness 
of phenomena by proving them to have been 
fraudulent ; exposing the unscrupulous methods 
adopted by people who, in search of the easiest 
way to make a living, simulated the phenomena 
of honest mediumship. (2) During the thirty- 
three years of its existence the society has in- 
vestigated scores of cases of "materialization/ ' 
of " levitation, ' ' of human bodies being lifted 
into mid-air without any perceptible assistance ; 
instances of furniture being mysteriously moved 
from its place, of musical instruments being 
played upon without any visible contact ; of the 
slate-writing wonders enacted by Dr. Slade and 
others. "Without exception, according to Sec- 
retary Hodgson's report, the investigators 
found evidence of fraudulent contrivance, or 
manipulation, or both. (3) The society has 
taught us who are not expert observers to aban- 
don the notion that we are competent to judge 
of the genuineness of psychic phenomena or the 
merits of a seance. The truth is that very little 
weight can be attached to the ordinary spec- 
tator's account of what has been seen, so easy 
is it to report it inaccurately or to miss seeing 

88 



PSYCHICAL EESEARCH 

what is most essential. Who of us, lay people, 
can accurately describe the familiar trick of the 
professional conjurer and deny, on the basis of 
what we have seen, that the watch was smashed, 
that the handkerchief was burned up, that the 
crown was knocked out of the silk hat? The 
reason we cannot deny what we have seen is 
that we watched closely the right hand, to which 
the conjurer turned our attention, while he did 
the trick with the left. How ridiculous is the 
notion that anyone with a pair of good eyes is 
competent to decide, at a seance, whether fraud 
is being perpetrated or not ! The vast majority 
of us are no more capable of forming a trust- 
worthy opinion of what is being done than we 
are competent to pronounce on the genuineness 
of a Syriac manuscript. Even such highly 
trained observers as Crookes and Lodge, Wal- 
lace and Myers, were, at times, deceived. It 
therefore behooves us, untrained observers, to 
refrain from attempting to pass acceptable 
judgment on phenomena from which the hy- 
pothesis of fraud is not to be eliminated. (4) 
The Society for Psychical Research has shown 
that the human mind is a much more complex 
and inclusive affair than was supposed, that 
consciousness is a speck of light illuminating 

89 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

only a part of the total self, that the human 
mind is like an iceberg, of which two-thirds is 
below the surface of the sea. Here again, then, 
in its effort to know what lies below the surface 
of our awareness, the worth-whileness of the 
society is made manifest. (5) The discovery 
of the influence exercised by the subconscious 
in the causation of disease is one of the recent 
triumphs of psychopathology and it may be 
traced in part to the work of the Society for 
Psychical Research. Nor is it an unwarranted 
expectation to look for light from this source 
on certain forms of insanity still regarded as 
incurable. (6) If the phenomena that seem to 
point to the reality of a future life are false, 
the world cannot afford to be fooled by them. 
If, on the other hand, the phenomena are true, 
the world cannot afford to remain ignorant of 
them. Hence the mighty significance of a so- 
ciety devoted to research in this field. 

We are thus brought directly to the cardinal 
claim of spiritualism as affected by the investi- 
gations of the Society for Psychical Research. 
In a word, those investigations have resulted 
in taking some of the "shine" out of spiritual- 
ism. In their passionate revolt from philoso- 
phical materialism, the Spiritualists exagger- 

90 



PSYCHICAL KESEAECH 

ated their claim. They attributed all psychic 
phenomena, all mediumistic messages, to the 
agency of spirits. Bnt the Society for Psychi- 
cal Eesearch soon tempered the claim by show- 
ing that many such messages — indeed, the great 
majority of them — could be explained without 
calling in the aid of spirits. By setting up al- 
ternative hypotheses the society took some of 
the shine out of spiritualism. The late Fred- 
erick Myers, who for years was a leading rep- 
resentative of the society, classified the substi- 
tutes for the spiritistic hypothesis under two 
heads. First, the mind of the medium. From 
this source come most of the messages, even 
though they refer to matters which the medium 
once knew but had forgotten, because what once 
entered the mind may again come out of the 
mind even though it be amid trance-conditions. 
Second, thought-transference or telepathy, i. e., 
the direct and supersensuous communication of 
mind with mind. By the transmission of facts 
not known to the medium, from someone at a 
distance or from someone present at the sit- 
ting, a goodly number of " cases' ' may be ex- 
plained. But there is, says Myers, an "irre- 
ducible minimum" of messages that cannot be 
classed under either of these two categories; 

91 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

messages containing facts known only to a de- 
ceased person and that person an utter stranger 
to the medium, thus seeming to compel the con- 
clusion of the survival of the departed person. 
Included in this " irreducible minimum" of mes- 
sages not explicable in terms of the medium's 
mind or of telepathy are those reported, in a 
trance-state, by the celebrated Mrs. Piper. 1 
Grant that some of her successful revelations 
are the result of chance coincidence, others of 
clever conjecture, still others of tapping the 
inner recesses of the sitter's consciousness, thus 
giving back to the sitter his own ideas as com- 
munications from the spirit world, yet there is 
a residuum of cases that call for a more ade- 
quate explanation than any of these, cases that 
cannot be subsumed under any of the categories 
already named, cases in which she has given 
such lifelike personations of deceased people 
that relatives have hailed them as the very 
spirits of the dead. Nay more, disinterested 
expert investigators, men devoid of the expec- 
tations and sympathies that characterize rela- 
tives and friends, have felt that there was no 
alternative hypothesis but the spiritistic to ac- 
count for what was revealed. In the ninth 

1 F. W. H. Myers: "Science and a Future Life," Chap. I. 
92 



PSYCHICAL KESEAKCH 

chapter of his magnum opus, " Human Person- 
ality and its Survival after Death,' ' Myers 
cites a number of such cases. A peculiar 
pathos attaches to this chapter in that the au- 
thor died while he was at work on it, while ac- 
cumulating evidence in support of the belief in 
immortality. 1 

In the early days of their organization Spir- 
itualists regarded ghosts, apparitions and 
kindred phenomena as evidences of spirit- 
agency. The Society for Psychical Eesearch, by 
offering terrestrial explanations, has taken still 
more of the shine out of spiritualism. These 
phenomena have been traced to one or another 
of two sources. Either they are the result of 
thought-transference from one mind to another 
and apprehended by that other in the form of 
an hallucination of the sense of sight or of 
hearing, or else they emanate directly from the 
subconscious self of the seer as purely mental 
images. Granting thought-transference to be 
a fact, it is quite credible that a telepathic hal- 
lucination may be so strong in us that we seem 
to see objectively what is only a subjective 

1 The famous experience of Sir Oliver Lodge at his first 
sitting with Mrs. Piper is given in Brace's "Adventures in 
the Psychical," pp. 150 ff. 

93 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

image. For illustrations of both these causes 
no more satisfactory book can be recommended 
than the " Census of Hallucinations ' ' by Ed- 
mund Gurney, a distinguished member and of- 
ficer of the Society for Psychical Eesearch and 
one who specialized in this field of investiga- 
tion. The well-known book by the Misses Mor- 
ison and Lamont, entitled " An Adventure" fur- 
nishes an admirable example of a real ghost 
emanating from the subconscious mind of the 
seer. Both these ladies had seen, at the Petit 
Trianon, in Versailles, the ghost of Marie An- 
toinette. But the two visions differed in cer- 
tain particulars, the reason being that the seers' 
subconscious knowledge of the place and the 
period differed. The fact of differences in the 
two accounts of what had been seen could 
scarcely be explained on the hypothesis of a 
supramundane agency. Moreover Gurney 's 
" Census" shows that the number of reported 
apparitions of the living was twice as large as 
those of the dead, and the spiritistic hypothesis 
would not be required to explain this larger 
group. But in as much as we know psychical 
states only in direct and immediate association 
with physical conditions, no trustworthy deduc- 
tion can be made from apparitions. And even 

94 



PSYCHICAL EESEARCH 

were it admitted that personality could survive 
death for a time (as perhaps in the case of 
Phinuit, Mrs. Piper 's ' ' control, ' ' x who has 
not been heard from since 1897), it would not 
prove that such personality could perdure for- 
ever. 2 To assign any value to apparitions of 
the dead as evidence of their survival is im- 
possible so long as their independence of all 
material association is unproved. And this is 
the weakest link in the chain of the spiritistic 
argument. 

Within recent years the Society for Psychical 
Eesearch has abandoned all investigation of 
"materializations." It did so on the ground 
that the conditions under which these phe- 
nomena are exhibited do not preclude the possi- 
bility of fraud. Moreover these phenomena, 
alleged to be the work of spirits, have been 
equally well produced by conjurers. Further- 
more, it was perceived that "materializations" 
could not prove the identity of the person con- 
cerned since, for this, psychical, not material, 
phenomena are required. Accordingly the so- 

1 The identity of this French physician has never been 
established. Is he, perhaps, a "secondary personality" of 
Mrs. Piper? 

2 See the Journal of Religious Psychology (April, 1912), 
pp. 200 ff. 

95 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

ciety turned its attention exclusively to these, 
to hypnotism, clairvoyance, telepathy, and 
above all to the trance-utterances of mediums 
as affording the most promising evidential 
ground for belief in discarnate spirits and the 
possibility of holding intercourse with them. 
Most renowned of all the mediums that have 
aided the society in these investigations is Mrs. 
Leonora Piper of Massachusetts. This lady 
has won the respect and approbation of all the 
researchers, because of her honest earnest de- 
sire to aid them in their seeking for the truth, 
because of her absolute freedom from decep- 
tion, having successfully met every test to 
which it was put, and because of the unusually 
high degree of accuracy in her trance-utter- 
ances. 1 Indeed so remarkable have been her 
revelations that Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William 
Crookes, Mr. Myers and Mr. Hodgson adopted 
the spiritistic hypothesis as seemingly the only 
possible basis on which to explain what Mrs. 
Piper had made known to them. To quote Sir 
Oliver Lodge: "Already the facts examined 
have convinced me that memory and affection 
are not limited to that association with matter 

1 See the biographical sketch, by M. Sage translated by 
Noralie Robertson, with an introdnction by Sir Oliver Lodge. 

96 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

by which alone they can manifest themselves 
here and now, and that personality persists be- 
yond bodily death. The evidence, nothing new 
or sensational but cumulating and demanding 
prolonged serious study, to my mind goes to 
prove that discarnate intelligence, under certain 
conditions, may interact with us on the material 
side, thus indirectly coming within our scien- 
tific ken ; and that gradually we may hope to at- 
tain some understanding of the nature of a 
larger, perhaps ethereal, existence, and of the 
conditions regulating intercourse across the 
chasm. A body of responsible investigators 
has even now landed on the treacherous but 
promising shores of a new continent. ' ' 

But over against these representatives of the 
Society for Psychical Research stand others 
equally entitled to pass judgment on psychic 
phenomena and who have remained unconvinced 
as to the reality of discarnate spirits and the 
genuineness of alleged intercourse between 
them and persons still in the flesh. More espe- 
cially must mention be made of Mr. Frank Pod- 
more and Professor William James. The 
former was for over thirty years an investi- 
gator in this field. After examining most cau- 
tiously and exhaustively all the recorded utter- 

97 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

ances of Mrs. Piper, lie declared that "not a 
single instance can be pointed to in which a 
precise and unambiguous piece of information 
has been furnished of a kind which could not 
have proceeded from the medium's own mind 
working on the material provided and the hints 
let drop by those present at the sitting." I 
quote from Mr. Podmore's "Modern Spiritual- 
ism," a book which can only be characterized 
as one of the most judicial, crystal clear, bal- 
anced works in the literature of psychical re- 
search; "a veritable mine of critically sifted 
material " it is and as such it should be worked 
by every one wishing to form adequate judg- 
ments on the subject. All the more imperative 
is study of this work because the press has 
given the public a preponderance of testimony 
in favor of spiritism. There is need of restor- 
ing the lost equilibrium of judgment by seeing 
the other side. 

Professor James, as readers of his "Psychol- 
ogy" know, stood neither for "spiritism" nor 
for the theory of man 's ' ' soul. ' ' 1 The latter he 
regarded as a "name, masquerading," the for- 
mer as "not proven," though he stood ever 
ready to "undeafen his ears and revoke the 

1 See Vol. I, pp. 182, 209 et oil. 
98 



PSYCHICAL EESEAECH 

negative conclusion if growing familiarity with 
these phenomena should tend to corroborate the 
hypothesis that spirits play some part in their 
production." * This negative position of both 
Podmore and James has been considerably 
strengthened by the fact that communications, 
purporting to come from men of recognized 
ability and attainments while on earth, fall 
lamentably short of what we have a right to ex- 
pect from them. " George Pelham" for in- 
stance (to keep the pseudonym by which he is 
known), was an author of highly praised phil- 
osophical books. But when interrogated by the 
medium as to the relation of mind and body, he 
was unable to give a single intelligible answer, 
revealing a curious incapacity for using ab- 
stract terms. Eev. W. Stainton Moses, a schol- 
arly priest of the Anglican Church, is another 
example. He became suddenly aware of me- 
diumistic power while suffering from theological 
doubt. When asked by the medium to tell the 
names of the two controls mentioned in his 
book on " Spirit Teaching" he gave other 
names. 2 Even Mrs. Piper, at times, when test 

1 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 
23, p. 29. 

2 True, this may have been due to error on his part while 

99 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

questions were put to her relating to those 
whom she was said to have summoned from the 
beyond, gave no answer. 

Additional strength is given to the negative 
position of skeptical members of the Society for 
Psychical Eesearch by the case of Miss Hannah 
Wild of Boston, who just before her death left 
a sealed letter which was to serve as a test of 
spirit-intercourse. No one but she knew the 
contents of that letter. She gave her sister, 
Mrs. Blodgett, precise instructions to let no hu- 
man hands touch that sealed letter until she 
herself, through a medium, should reveal its 
contents. At several sittings Mrs. Piper tried 
to read the letter and the final outcome of her 
efforts was that in every particular save the 
name, the reading was wrong. Mr. Myers, Dr. 
Hodgson, and Professor James, all left sealed 
letters to be opened only after the medium had 
been summoned and attempted to make known 
their contents. But, to date, no summons has 
been received from any one of the three and, 
what is equally disappointing, such messages 
as are reported to have come from them deal 
with most trivial incidents, the color of a pen- 
on earth, the new names being the correct ones. But even 
so he did not answer the question. 

100 



PSYCHICAL KESEAECH 

knife, the smoking of a cigar, the wearing of a 
suit made in London, etc., etc. Professor 
Hyslop's theory to account for the disappoint- 
ing character of these messages is to the effect 
that the medium at the time of the sitting be- 
comes aware of the total consciousness of the 
deceased and thus knows not what, out of the 
mass of material, to transmit, becoming in con- 
sequence confused, contradictory, erratic in her 
utterances. But even so, we are warranted in 
expecting at least a fair measure of relevancy 
in the communications and in its absence the 
theory fails to satisfy. To attribute the pre- 
vailing triviality of the messages to "an ab- 
normal condition of the spirit at the time the 
communication was received' ' is surely unwar- 
ranted. Why assume that abnormality obtains 
so often! And may not the abnormality be in 
the medium rather than in the spirit at the 
time of transmitting the message? Eeference 
has already been made to this in the discussion 
of popular objections to the claim of spiritual- 
ism. 1 A third explanation for the persistently 
trivial character of the messages is that "the 
channels of communication are faulty,' ' our 
minds being "hampered by their connection 

1 See p. 74. 

101 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

with, our bodies. ' ' But we know mental activity 
only in association with bodily organism and 
hence we dare not assume that consciousness 
is "hampered" by bodily association. More- 
over what warrant is there for the assumption 
that departed spirits are bodiless or that 
thought is necessarily "better" or "higher" 
when freed from bodily connection! For all 
we know, the spirits may be clothed in some 
form of matter imperceptible to us. Thought, 
too, in association with body, may be "better" 
than when freed from it. 

Concerning telepathy, it should be realized 
that this is only a name for thought-transfer- 
ence. It tells us absolutely nothing as to the 
mode of transmission. It expresses merely the 
idea of transmission without the use of the 
ordinary sensory channels of communication. 
Consequently the appeal to telepathy in ac- 
counting for psychic phenomena is just as much 
an appeal to the unknown as is the spiritistic 
hypothesis. To be sure, if there be such re- 
sponse between souls separated by great dis- 
tance, it suggests (it does not prove), that if we 
can get on at times without the ordinary chan- 
nels while still on earth, we may be able to dis- 
pense with them altogether. That a human 

102 



PSYCHICAL EESEAECH 

mind should be able to reach down into the 
stored memories of some other mind, and from 
the mass select just the one pertinent to the 
given occasion, defies explanation in the pres- 
ent state of our knowledge. To say that telep- 
athy has its analogy in the phenomena of wire- 
less telegraphy is to assume too much. The 
analogy breaks down at an important point. 
For while, in the latter, messages weaken ac- 
cording to the distance they travel, in the case 
of telepathy the messages are often clearest 
and strongest when sent from the greatest dis- 
tance. 

That telepathy is a reality "proven beyond 
all question, ' ' no one will admit who is familiar 
with the essay of Professor Simon Newcomb, 
or with Mr. Podmore's " Naturalization of the 
Supernatural. ' \ Both these writers are of the 
opinion that the alleged transmitted messages 
really come from within the receiver's mind and 
that further knowledge of its operations will 
verify this assumption. 

Before leaving the response of Psychical Be- 
search to the claim of spiritualism, mention 
must be made of Myers' doctrine of the "sub- 
liminal self" as furnishing a foundation for 
faith in human survival of death. In the mag- 

103 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

num opus already referred to, the doctrine is 
set forth in full detail and with the same liter- 
ary grace observed in all his earlier writings. 
According to Myers there are within ns two 
fields of consciousness separated by a threshold 
(limen). That mental activity which lies below 
the limen of ordinary consciousness is the sub- 
liminal, while that which lies above this and 
within normal consciousness is the supralimi- 
nal. The subliminal (or subconscious) is thus 
a sort of reservoir in which are stored up 
powers acquired through education and expe- 
rience and extending beyond the normal capaci- 
ties of the mind. Now it was on the reality and 
powers of this subliminal self that Myers based 
his belief in a future life. He held that the con- 
scious (supraliminal) self is only a small part 
of the total self; that beneath conscious per- 
sonality extends a much larger and immortal 
subliminal self. To use his own words : ' ' The 
conscious self of each of us, as we call it, the 
empirical, the supraliminal self, as I should 
prefer to say, does not comprise the whole of 
the consciousness or the faculty within us. 
There exists a more comprehensive conscious- 
ness, a profounder faculty, which for the most, 
part remains potential only so far as regards 

104 



PSYCHICAL RESEABCH 

the life on earth, but from which the conscious- 
ness and the faculty of earth-life are mere selec- 
tions, and which reasserts itself in its pleni- 
tude after the liberating change of death." It 
is not strange that a view as romantic as this 
and presented with exceptional literary charm 
and having, moreover, the sympathy though not 
the support of Professor James, 1 should have 
been eagerly hailed by those hungering for 
tangible testimony to the reality of life beyond 
death. By all such the magnum opus was joy- 
ously welcomed as offering a new source of re- 
ligious faith. Indeed there were those who felt 
that the doctrine of the subliminal self had come 
to light just in the nick of time when the old 
religious forts were giving way under a fire of 
criticism and science. For now it was seen 
that science (in the work of Myers) had become 
the ally of faith. Philosophical materialism 
and historical criticism might do their very 
worst yet only the outworks of religion would 
be open to their attack and the man of faith 
would find himself safely ensconced within 

1 Professor James was too keen a psychologist, too prag- 
matic a philosopher to consider Myers* conception of the 
subliminal self as "established." He was by no means per- 
suaded that the subconscious portion of the mind had suf- 
ficient unity to warrant our regarding it as a personality. 

105 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

the impregnable fortress of the subliminal 
self. 

Thus the inutile character of the subcon- 
scious self in the struggle for existence to- 
gether with its powers extending beyond those 
of normal consciousness and in no way cor- 
related with our present environment; this it 
was that made Myers feel he had an all-suffic- 
ing basis for belief in survival after death. 
But there are certain serious objections to be 
urged against this view. In the first place, it 
is by no means proved that such a subliminal 
self exists in every human being. The fact is 
that in normal persons it does not appear. 
Only in pathological subjects does there seem to 
be within one and the same mind a chief and a 
subordinate center of life, capable, moreover, 
of dissociation so that separate personalities 
may function in one and the same body. 1 So 
far as evidence goes "subliminal" conscious- 
ness in normal persons is, if not nonexistent, 
practically negligible, while in pathological 
subjects it is distinctly inferior to the supra- 
liminal. 

In the second place if the supraliminal self 
we all know and on which we spend our years, 

1 See Dr. Morton Prince's "Dissociation of Personality." 
106 



PSYCHICAL EESEAECH 

bringing it into ever closer approximation to 
completeness, is to die and the subliminal to 
survive, what shadow of reason can there be 
for continuing the educative task! Why 
should immortality be accorded to the sub- 
liminal self, and the supraliminal, which we 
have labored to develop, be annihilated? Why 
bestow the supreme gift of eternity upon a prob- 
lematical self of whose capacities in normal per- 
sons we know nothing and whose connection, if 
any, with our better known self is equally un- 
known? 

A third objection relates to what is perhaps 
a physiological sine qua non of subliminal 
power. Can the subliminal self persist apart 
from physiological conditions or are its proc- 
esses dependent upon a physical organism? 
Judging the issue by our experience in ordinary 
mental processes, all of them physiologically 
conditioned, we should say that these extra- 
ordinary processes, if such there actually be, 
are likewise so conditioned. Nor does Myers 
say a word to support the belief that the sub- 
liminal self can perdure independently of a 
physical organism. 

The results of our inquiry may be briefly 
summed up as follows : 

107 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

1. Hitherto no valid generally satisfying evi- 
dence has been adduced to warrant belief in 
actual intercourse between deceased and living 
persons, whether through Mrs. Piper or any 
other medium. In no instance has the identity 
of the alleged communicator with the deceased 
personality been established beyond all doubt. 

2. Hitherto the subject matter of alleged 
communications, reported in the Proceedings 
of the Society for Psychical Research, is such 
as to deepen whatever doubt may already exist 
as to their supramundane source. 

3. Hitherto the existence of either normal or 
subliminal consciousness apart from some form 
of bodily organism has not been proved. And 
the burden of proof rests with the spiritists be- 
cause we know mental states only in connection 
with bodily organisms. For aught we know, 
the spirits, if such there be, exist in some sort 
of material form as yet beyond our power of 
perception. It is interesting to note in pass- 
ing, that neither in the Old Testament nor in 
the New is " spirit" equivalent to "immate- 
rial." 

4. Hitherto no one has shown that the spirit- 
istic hypothesis is the only possible explana- 
tion of that "irreducible minimum" of medium- 

108 



PSYCHICAL EESEAECH 

istic messages which, in Myers' estimation, 
compels acceptance of that hypothesis. 

Professor Hyslop holds that "we are reduced 
to spiritism or telepathy. No other mode of 
explanation is open to us. ' ' But may it not be 
that we are not yet far enough on in our knowl- 
edge of the field of possible explanations to 
settle down upon one or the other of these al- 
ternatives, or to form any hypothesis that is 
adequate? The scientific attitude, in the light 
of all the objections that may be urged against 
adoption of the spiritistic theory, would seem 
to be suspense of judgment together with con- 
tinued patient and thorough investigation of all 
promising phenomena and deeper penetration 
into partially explored sources of explanation, 
such as the recesses of the medium's mind and 
the subconscious suggestion of the sitter. Who 
knows but that in proportion as the conditions 
leading up to a test message are known and the 
characteristics of the medium and of the sitter 
are fully discerned, we shall find the mysterious 
nature of the messages perplex us no more. 

If it be urged that the spiritistic hypothesis 
is "simpler" than any naturalistic one, in- 
stantly the inevitable reply will be : That de- 
pends upon our state of culture. To the sav- 

109 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

age it seems simpler to believe that the sun 
rises and sets than that the earth's motion ac- 
counts for what he sees. To children it is 
simpler to believe that barrels rolling in the 
heavens produce thunder than laboriously to 
trace its relation to electricity. Similarly to 
many adults it is simpler to believe in the 
agency of spirit-intercourse than to study the 
manifold hereditary and social relations, the 
conditions of nerve cells and sense organs and 
mental processes which may explain the test 
messages delivered by mediums. 

Finally, in an age of unprecedented scientific 
advances, an age that has witnessed wireless 
telegraphy and telephony, the discovery of 
"neon" and of the " discontinuity of matter," 
we should be slow to postulate extramundane 
agencies till this darkest Africa, the human 
mind, has been more fully explored. It is an 
established canon of investigation that in the 
search for causes the mundane realm should be 
thoroughly worked before resorting to non-ter- 
restrial agencies. Undoubtedly there are as- 
pects of Mrs. Piper's mediumship that, for the 
nonce, defy explanation in terms of any known 
agencies, yet from fuller mastery of hypnotism, 
or of thought-transference, or of subliminal 

110 



PSYCHICAL EESEAECH 

activity, in the mind of medium or sitter, the 
necessary light may still be forthcoming to ex- 
plain to our entire satisfaction the entire brood 
of mysterious phenomena. 

On the other hand it must be confessed that 
in the present state of our knowledge the spir- 
itistic hypothesis explains Myers' "irreducible 
minimum'' of phenomena better than any other, 
cases in which information has been given by a 
medium which, it would seem, could not pos- 
sibly have been taken from the mind of any per- 
son living on earth. Hence the conviction that 
psychical research has established a modicum 
of probability that some satisfying sign may 
yet be given us of the reality of discarnate 
spirits. No unbiased champion of the spirit- 
istic hypothesis would claim that a demonstra- 
tion of the reality of a future life has been fur- 
nished even by the most astounding of the phe- 
nomena made known to us. Nothing has been 
adduced as yet which offsets the objections that 
have been offered to acceptance of the spirit- 
istic hypothesis and until unanimity among 
those competent to judge has been reached, 
verification remains unrealized. 



VII 

THE THEOSOPHICAL BELIEF, REINCARNATION 

It would be a mistake to infer from the title 
of this chapter that reincarnation is a cardinal 
doctrine of the movement known as theosophy. 
Membership in a Theosophical Society is not 
conditioned either by acceptance or denial of the 
doctrine. But, in as much as most, if not all, 
theosophists believe in reincarnation, we are 
warranted in describing it as a theosophical be- 
lief. 

It seemed worth while to include it in our 
study of foundations for the faith in a future 
life because, while somewhat in disfavor among 
orientals, in whom the doctrine has generated a 
sort of spiritual ennui, in our western civiliza- 
tion it is more popular than ever, thousands 
upon thousands hailing the doctrine as the sole 
satisfying solution of the problem of physical 
and moral evil and an adequate substitute for 
the popular conception of immortality. 

A further reason for giving it our attention 
112 



EEINCARNATION 

is its bearing upon the dark facts of our earthly 
experience, such as the glaring inequalities of 
human life, the seeming injustices that obtain 
among all sorts and conditions of men. Surely 
we can ill afford to treat with indifference a 
movement that seriously attempts to cast a ray 
of light into our darkness, to meet our innate 
demand for justice. Moreover, in its teaching 
of reincarnation, the Theosophical Movement 
offers a view of man's future estate which must 
be deemed the most plausible and the least re- 
pellent, infinitely preferable to the Christian 
conception of Heaven and its rewards, of Hell 
and its punishments; to be ranked, indeed, as 
the most engaging and consoling of all historic 
theories of the hereafter and having, withal, the 
indorsement of the most ancient of religions. 

The doctrine of reincarnation holds out the 
hope of our realizing some day the meaning 
of life's limitations, struggles, handicaps. It 
repudiates the idea of leaving this earth for- 
ever, with its problems for the most part un- 
solved, as tantamount to irretrievable defeat 
and therefore it teaches return as necessary and 
inevitable if we are to win out at last and learn 
the whole lesson of life's meaning and purpose. 

The modern Theosophical Movement, rooted 
113 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

in ancient Hindu and Buddhistic thought, was 
founded by Mme. Blavatsky, in 1875. By rea- 
son of its oriental derivation the movement has 
done much to disabuse western minds of mis- 
taken notions concerning the peoples of ancient 
India and their sacred literature. 

Until the coming of the Theosophical Move- 
ment the average Englishman and American 
thought of Hindus and Buddhists as benighted, 
ignorant pagans whom it was a duty to subdue 
and a charity to enlighten. But through theo- 
sophical enterprise in translating, publishing 
and disseminating the literature of these peo- 
ples, the traditional sentiments regarding them 
have been changed and the liberalizing truth of 
the universality of moral and religious ideas 
has become a commonplace of religious thought. 
The increasing popularity of the "Bhagavad- 
Grita" or "Song of the Blessed One," dealing 
with all the deepest problems that concern the 
spiritual life of man, is due to the generous en- 
terprise of theosophists who made provision 
for its publication in attractive, inexpensive 
forms. 

I am not a theosophist. Were I one, I would 
not hesitate to call myself such. I may be par- 
doned if, in response to the statement that I 

114 



BEINCABNATION 

am "just a bit afraid to call myself a theoso- 
phist" I appeal to my religious history, which, 
if it proves anything, proves that I am not 
afraid to wear any label that rightly belongs to 
me. 

The word "theosophy" means, literally, di- 
vine wisdom, insight into God's nature, proc- 
esses and purposes, particularly in relation to 
man and his destiny. 

There never was a time when men did not 
claim to have some such divine wisdom. Con- 
sequently modern theosophy takes its place in 
the evolution of such speculation, its found- 
ress having worked out a complete system of 
faith and practice. On the basis of "divine 
wisdom,' ' she sought to replace the dogmatic 
Christianity, the chilling agnosticism and the 
crude materialism which alike had failed to 
satisfy souls hungering for a religion that 
would meet the needs of the heart and of the 
head. 

" Humanity,' ' said Mme. Blavatsky in her 
inaugural address, "is today like an orphan 
crying for guidance and light. Amid the in- 
creasing splendors of a progress purely ma- 
terialistic the spirit has been starved. Hu- 
manity is stretching out its hands for a religion 

115 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

that will satisfy, and the Far East furnishes 
it" 

She even went so far as to say that the convic- 
tion is dawning on Spencer and Tyndall that the 
" Unknowable ' ' can never be known except 
through Hindu esoteric doctrines. In passion- 
ate pleading tones she asked: "What is there 
in this restless, dissatisfied world for us who 
have outgrown the creed in which we were 
raised? Is the Unknowable to be forever un- 
known ?" And her answer was: "The Mas- 
ters have taught us the secret of the Universe." 

We are thus introduced to the source whence 
"divine wisdom" is derived. In her "Key to 
Theosophy" Mme. Blavatsky says: "We call 
them ' Masters' because they are our teachers, 
from them we derived all the theosophical 
truths. Some they delivered directly, and 
some they inspired, leaving the literary form to 
the witness." She called them "Mahatmas," 
borrowing a well-established Sanskrit word 
meaning "great souls" and used in India to 
describe persons who have retired from the 
world, who have subdued their passions and 
gained a reputation for sanctity. So generic, 
however, is the Indian use of the term that the 
late Max Miiller occasionally received letters 

116 



KEINCAKNATION 

addressing him as "Mahatma" in place of 
"Professor." In official theosophical docu- 
ments we read that these "Mahatmas have 
completed their human evolution ; they have at- 
tained perfection; they have reached what 
Christians call salvation and Buddhists, libera- 
tion. They have consciously liberated them- 
selves to the course of their being. Though 
fitted to enter Nirvana, they voluntarily remain 
on earth in order to form the connecting link 
between human and superhuman beings. Out 
of compassion for ignorant, undeveloped souls, 
they wear again the fetters of the flesh, the 
burden of gross matter and give themselves to 
be saviors of men, guardians of humanity. 
They remain in quiet, retired and secluded 
spots, away from the turmoil of human life, in 
order to carry on their helpful work, which 
would be impossible to accomplish in the 
crowded haunts of men and a civilization com- 
posed of money and glory of the personality. 
At certain times in history, in serious crises, in 
transition times, according to cyclic law, they 
come out from their retreats into the world and 
deliver a portion of their total store of knowl- 
edge to disciples, or messengers, to impart that 
message to the world." 

117 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

Without pausing to discuss either these 
claims or Dr. Hodgson's unfavorable report 
upon them, published in the Proceedings of 
the Society for Psychical Research, let us sim- 
ply note that whether his charges be well- 
founded or not, Mme. Blavatsky and the Theo- 
sophical Movement are not synonymous terms. 
Neither the manners nor the morals of any in- 
dividual theo sophist can be construed as rep- 
resenting the entire movement. 

Turning our attention now to the doctrine of 
man's destiny as held by the great majority of 
theosophists, we find that fundamental thereto 
is the belief in an impersonal, infinite, eternal 
principle or power, manifested in both spirit 
and matter. The cosmos is considered as 
"evolving on seven separate planes." Begin- 
ning with the denser and moving forward to the 
finer these planes are: the physical; the emo- 
tional, or astral; the mental, or heavenly; the 
intuitional, or Buddhic; the spiritual, or At- 
mic-Nirvanic ; the Monadic, or world of origins ; 
and the Divine World, or world of the Logos. 
Of these seven cosmic planes we are told that 
they who have the time and the ability can so 
develop as to come into conscious relation with 
each of the higher worlds. Theosophy teaches 

118 



EEINCAKNATION 

that human evolution has reached a stage where 
it is possible for new senses to be developed, 
keener, subtler, more sensitive than the five now 
normal senses and equal to bringing conscious- 
ness into direct touch with the finer phases of 
matter, imperceptible save as these higher 
senses are cultivated. 1 Mrs. Besant, speaking 
for her fellow-theosophists, has specified two 
particular senses yet to be developed ; nay more, 
she has indicated "two little organs in the brain, 
the ■ pituitary body' and the ' pineal gland,' 
— organs which were once active but have be- 
come atrophied, of which only a remnant re- 
mains, no longer utilizable," as the instruments 
through which these new senses will work. 2 
But, far from being "atrophied" and "no 
longer utilizable" these glands fulfill functions 
absolutely indispensable to the well-being of our 
physical system. 

Medical science has taught us that without 
the pituitary gland, metabolism is greatly dis- 
turbed and growth seriously affected, witness 
the results of observation and experimentation 
conducted in hospitals and laboratories both 

1 Mrs. Annie Besant : "Popular Lectures on Theosophy," 
pp. 10, 11. 

2 Op. tit., pp. 90, 91. 

119 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

at home and abroad. 1 "We theosophists," 
says Mrs. Besant, "declare, not on theory but 
on observation and experience, that these two 
organs are rudimentary, preparing for the fu- 
ture." Just what this implies our theosophi- 
cal friends do not tell us. On the other hand 
science has demonstrated that these two organs 
have, ever since the appearance of man, been 
functioning to sustain the harmonious opera- 
tion of bodily conditions and even of life it- 
self. 

Corresponding to the seven planes of the 
cosmos are "the seven divisions of man," to 
wit: physical body, life-principle, astral body, 
animal-soul, mind, soul, and spirit. The physi- 
cal body is animated by the life-principle. The 
astral body invests the life-principle while the 
animal-soul is the seat of our desires and pas- 
sions. These four are material and conse- 
quently perishable. Nevertheless they fulfill 
a distinct and indispensable service as instru- 
ments for the remaining three, which are im- 
material and, therefore, imperishable. 

Thus, according to theosophy, Man, essential 
Man, having a body, is a triune being, consist- 

1 See the illuminating chapter in Dr. A. P. Brubaker's 
"Physiology/' especially pp. 458-459 (4th ed.). 

120 



BEINCABNATION 

ing of mind, soul, and spirit, this last "a spark" 
from the absolute Spirit, possessed by all human 
beings and therefore constituting ' ' the basis of 
the brotherhood of the humans.' y Thus each 
personality is a kind of omnibus carrying a 
number of passengers through the journey of 
life, one or more stepping off at successive sta- 
tions on the road. At the first station, called 
"death," the physical body and the life-prin- 
ciple get off, leaving the astral body (which has 
detached itself from the physical) to continue 
the journey with the other four passengers. 
At the next station, called "Kama Loka," or 
"place of desire," somewhat analogous to the 
Boman. Catholic Purgatory, the astral body and 
the animal-soul alight, leaving in the omnibus 
the three immaterial, imperishable passengers 
(mind, soul, and spirit). The next station is 
called "Devakan," or "place of the Gods," 
somewhat analogous to the orthodox Heaven, 
and here a prolonged halt is made. A beautiful 
resting place it is, between two periods of ac- 
tivity. Here the triune being gathers up the 
total of his past experience till at last the time 
arrives for his reincarnation. He returns to 
earth to repeat (an unknown number of times) 
the life journey already described ; the last jour- 

121 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

ney culminating in "a vanishing in the Glory 
to reappear perhaps in some distant day as an 
Avatar, or Divine Incarnation, ' ' to use the 
words of Mrs. Besant. 1 

We are thus brought, by this speculative proc- 
ess, to the central doctrine of reincarnation. 
It has a great intellectual ancestry. Not only 
was it entertained by Hindus and Buddhists for 
thirty centuries or more, but it was accepted 
also by one of the earliest and best known of 
the Christian sects, the Gnostics. To the stu- 
dent of the sources of modern theosophy it is 
interesting and suggestive to compare the "Pis- 
tis Sophia' ' (The Wisdom of Faith), a celebrated 
Gnostic work, with "Isis Unveiled," or with the 
" Secret Doctrine," or, again with the "Key to 
Theosophy, ' ' all three written by Mme. Bla vat- 
sky. Professor F. Legge, in an article con- 
tributed to LittelPs Living Age, commented in 
the following terms upon the relation of the 
later works to the earlier treatise : 

"I think that if the doctrines of the Theoso- 
phical Society are compared with what has 
come down to us of the Gnostic tenets, it is im- 
possible to resist the conclusion that the latter 
system is not only the same in all points as the 

1 "Lectures on Theosophy," Chap. II. 
122 



KEINCAKNATION 

elder, but that the coincidence is too close to be 
the result of accident. ' ' 

Eeferring to reincarnation the writer re- 
marks : 

"In like manner, the theory of purification 
by reincarnations, which Colonel Olcott defends 
in his lectures, and which Mr. Sinnett has elab- 
orated in 'the Occult World' and c Esoteric 
Buddhism' can be found very tersely given in 
the following passage of the 'Pistis Sophia' 
where, after describing the passage of the soul 
of the dead through the several spiritual worlds, 
it is brought before 'the Judge, the Virgin of 
Light,' and she tries that soul; and in case 
she shall find that soul to be sinful. . . . she 
delivereth it to one of her receivers, who will 
see that it be placed in a body befitting the sins 
that it hath committed. And verily I say to 
you, she shall not let the soul be released from 
the changes of its bodies until it shall have ac- 
complished its uttermost cycle in the shapes 
whereof it may be deserving." 

After citing other passages from the "Pistis 
Sophia," Mr. Legge says: 

"Anyone who will take the trouble to refer 
to the work from which I quoted above will 
have no difficulty in recognizing in the Gnostic 

123 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

writings nearly every term nsed by Theoso- 
phists which is not, for obvious reasons, ex- 
pressed in an Oriental language.' ' 

In closing his series of comparisons, he makes 
the following unequivocal statement : 

"Taking all these facts together, they seem 
to form a very strong proof that the system of 
the Theosophical Society has not been handed 
down from prehistoric times by secret and mys- 
terious means, but has, on the contrary, been 
copied (en bloc) from the relics of Gnosticism." 

Think as we may of this contention, it would 
certainly seem clear that Mme. Blavatsky was 
thoroughly familiar with the Gnostic document, 
either directly or indirectly, and that its exist- 
ence does away with the notion that modern 
theosophy is an original system. 

The idea of reincarnation had its origin in 
ancient India in the period of the primitive Ar- 
yan religion known as ' * Vedism. ' ' The religion 
of the "Veda" had its Paradise for the good 
and its Hell for the morally bad. But one day 
an unknown Hindu speculating on death and 
the hereafter doubted the correctness of the 
Vedic theory. He questioned the continuance 
of the life in Paradise reserved for the right- 
eous. What if the good deeds done while on 

124 



EEINCAENATION 

earth warrant only a limited life in Heaven? 
What if the measure of virtue acquired on earth 
entitle one to only five years of Paradise, or 
ten, or twenty years? In that case, death will 
come again and immortality become a dream. 
And if a man can die in Heaven once, why 
not many times? From such reflection it was 
but a single step to the belief that the law of 
compensation operates not in the strange, un- 
known, distant Heaven, but here on the familiar 
earth, death and rebirth occurring over and 
over again until sin and virtue have adequately 
and completely received their respective pun- 
ishment and reward, each death followed by 
rebirth into a condition determined by the net 
result of conduct in all earlier lives. 

Thus the notion of rebirth, once entertained, 
was duly developed into a clearly defined doc- 
trine based on the law of cause and effect and 
called in Sanskrit " Karma.' ' It has its Chris- 
tian equivalent in the familiar apothegm of the 
Apostle Paul, " Whatsoever a man soweth that 
shall he also reap." Emerson stated it in the 
terse phrase, "The dice of God are loaded.' ' 
Karma means deed and the effect of deed on the 
subsequent character of the doer. The think- 
ing and the thought, the doing and the act, all 

125 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

pass away, but not without leaving enduring 
traces on the character. These are called 
" Samskaras, ' ' deed-structures, the preserva- 
tion of which makes reincarnation possible. 
Actions, like seeds, bear fruit, some early, some 
late, in the course of man's successive rebirths 
and Karma is the mysterious law which binds 
each life to the one next preceding it. 

We are what we are today, good or bad, or 
good and bad, because of good and bad deeds 
done in previous states of existence. This pres- 
ent life is only a link in a chain of lives through 
which we have already passed. We do not re- 
member them but they have left their indelible 
mark upon us. When a man dies he is reborn 
into precisely the condition he has deserved as 
a result of his conduct in earlier lives and he 
continues to be reborn until he has been fully 
punished for every sin and fully rewarded for 
every virtue. Having no recollection of any 
previous state no one has any knowledge of how 
his moral account stands, or as to what his next 
incarnation will be. Are you suffering in this 
life? Bear it with equanimity because you are 
only suffering the penalty you deserve for 
earlier misdeeds. Are you socially ostracized? 
It is because of your snobbishness and exclu- 

126 



KEINCAKNATION 

siveness in a previous state. Are you a con- 
firmed miser? Your miserliness is but the 
fruit of that seed of covetousness sown long ago. 
Is a man a murderer? "Tis because he had 
been already guilty of excessive anger and evil 
passion. His bad past has led to this terrible 
worse present. "Vivisectors," says Mrs. Be- 
sant, will be "born deformed in the future." 
" Inquisitor s," too, are "born again deformed' ' 
and so are "cruel school masters." 1 

Thus, according to theosophy, will and deed, 
with the character that is their result, rule every 
destiny. Hence nothing is accidental or prede- 
termined, while rewards and punishments ad- 
just themselves automatically to virtue and 
vice. Karma and reincarnation form a combi- 
nation by which Nature develops every human 
being, the essential person, as distinct from the 
organism of flesh and blood through which per- 
sonality manifests on the plane of physical phe- 
nomena. In other words, the life-history of a 
human soul is not thought of, by theosophists, 
as consisting of a miraculous beginning, ex 
nihilo, at birth — a brief term of physical ex- 
istence, followed by an unalterable eternity of 
personal consciousness in Heaven. Eather is 

1 "Lectures on Theosophy," pp. 57, 58. 
127 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

that life-history conceived as a succession of 
births, deaths and rebirths, reaching back to 
an indeterminable beginning and forward to 
an equally indeterminable cessation of the Kar- 
ma-Reincarnation process. 

Thus the theosophical foundation for faith 
in a future life (and lives) is the law of Karma 
which, operating on the physical, intellectual 
and moral planes, brings just deserts of reward 
and punishment to all moral beings according 
to their conduct. On that law of cause and ef- 
fect the moral universe rests and theosophists 
claim that for its complete operation other 
earth-lives beyond the present life are required. 
Without reincarnation and its foundation in 
Karma, theosophists hold that injustice would 
be a permanent characteristic of the moral 
i^orld and man left without a single respectable 
motive to make life worth the living. 

But the great majority of thinkers are not 
disposed to carry their thought so far. They 
hold that in the matter of reward and punish- 
ment for conduct the ends of justice are realized 
regardless of any future life. They readily 
grant that were reincarnation true it would 
solve many a vexing problem of human life, 
such as infant deaths, child prodigies, congeni- 

128 



KEINCARNATION 

tal idiots, unfulfilled plans and hopes. But so 
far as moral conduct is concerned the majority 
of mankind do not take the theosophical view, 
but find the requirements of justice met regard- 
less of a future life or lives. In the next lec- 
ture we shall see that there is an ethical purpose 
which can be subserved only by granting per- 
sonal continuity after death, but no subsequent 
life (or lives) is needed for securing to us re- 
ward and punishment for our behavior while 
here. Hence to build one's faith in a future 
life on the supposed necessity of it for the full 
operation of Karma in the field of moral de- 
serts is to build on sand. That reward and 
punishment are meted out to us synchronously 
with every act is a commonplace of modern 
ethical thinking. The notion that we ought to 
be paid in gold or government bonds or other 
material benefit for our good deeds belongs to 
an outgrown stage of moral philosophy, the 
traces of which have been preserved for us in 
the Old Testament. 

Yet in so far as theosophy makes reincarna- 
tion rest on Karma, or reward and punishment 
for conduct good or bad, it perpetuates this 
antiquated moral theory which postulates a 
hereafter to satisfy the demand for justice. 

129 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

Theosophists point to wickedness prospering 
and righteousness trampled down. They tell 
of the frequent disparity between virtue and 
prosperity, and for the outraged, incensed 
heart they see no chance for requital but in a 
succession of future lives. Here, for example, 
is an unscrupulous "sweater" squandering his 
ill-gotten gains on superfluities, while his ill- 
paid employees eke out a miserable existence 
on starvation wages. Here, again, is an un- 
principled politician who by bribery secures a 
well-salaried office which should have gone to 
the candidate of sterling integrity and honor. 
Here, once more, is a shrewd and shameless 
sharper enjoying life in a luxuriously appointed 
mansion on a fashionable thoroughfare, while 
the victims of his fraudulent operations occupy 
ill-ventilated quarters on unfrequented streets 
and alleys. How shall retribution be meted out 
to these sinners if there be not reincarnation 
in which Karma can be worked out? Thus 
have men founded their faith in immortality 
on the necessity of compensation for the unre- 
warded righteous and retribution of the pros- 
perous wicked. Yet not even on this founda- 
tion can the faith securely stand. For justice 
closes up the affairs of the universe at every 

130 



EEINCAENATION 

instant, so that were it to be annihilated at this 
moment the books of judgment would be found 
balanced and every jot and tittle of the law ful- 
filled. Natural law leaves no straws for the 
gleaning angels of another world, but completes 
its work from moment to moment. In Emer- 
son's essay on "Compensation" he gives no 
place to reincarnation as part of the full opera- 
tion of this moral law of cause and effect. On 
the contrary he shows that no doctrine of a here- 
after is necessary for the working out of that law 
full-circle. When the good man fails, he succeeds. 
He succeeds in the one and only kind of genuine 
success, the maintenance of his self-respect, the 
preservation of his character, the saving of his 
soul alive; like Eostand's Cyrano achieving 
the paradox of the successful failure. When 
the bad man succeeds he fails. He fails in the 
one and only kind of genuine failure, the col- 
lapse of self-respect, the bankruptcy of char- 
acter, the insolvency of soul. No hereafter, 
then, is required to right these seeming wrongs, 
because punishment is meted out the moment 
any law is broken, and the degree of retribution 
is in exact ratio to the violation of law. Daily 
we see the demonstration of this truth on the 
physical, intellectual and moral planes. Vice 

131 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

carries punishment in itself, working out terri- 
ble consequences for those who disobey the laws 
of health, both physical and moral. Over and 
over again has it happened that ruin in the 
outer life is recognized as triumph in the inner 
life. With what crystal-clear exposition has 
Shakespeare brought this truth home to us in 
the experience of the leading characters of his 
Henry VIII — Buckingham, Cranmer and 
Queen Katherine ! And how, again, in the case 
of Wolsey, he makes it the burden of his mes- 
sage to show that the deed always returns upon 
the doer and that he who has done an unjust 
deed has so far become unjust in himself even 
as they whose outer life has ended in ruin yet 
found that the righteousness of the inner life is 
the highest prosperity. Keep a law on the 
economic plane and break one on the moral 
plane or vice versa and the consequences in- 
stantly follow on each plane. Milton reading 
nightly by dim candlelight broke a law of eye- 
sight ; he was reading the Bible, but that could 
not save him from blindness. The ends of jus- 
tice are attained on every plane. Hence for 
one to build his faith in a future life on the 
alleged need of future recompense and retribu- 
tion is to build in vain. 

132 



BEINCAKNATION 

But in the estimation of theosophists this 
Emersonian, Shaksperian interpretation of 
Karma does not suffice. For them it needs to 
be supplemented by reincarnation as at once 
"an intellectual and a moral necessity." 

In her "Popular Lectures on Theosophy," 
from which several quotations have already 
been drawn, Mrs. Besant takes the ground that 
"without reincarnation life is a problem that 
defies solution and the universe unintelligible. ' ' 
Morally, reincarnation is a necessity because 
the dark riddles of the moral life remain un- 
solved without it. 

"No good person," she says, "can face the 
moral problems of life without anguish unless 
he knows reincarnation. ' ' Justice and love, she 
holds, must be "dethroned in this universe, " 
unless reincarnation be true. Our sense of jus- 
tice is outraged, "blasphemed," apart from this 
theory of the hereafter. 

But why take so pessimistic and despairing 
a view of human reason? After all, the great 
majority of thoughtful people do not entertain 
the theosophical doctrine nor do they feel hope- 
less of solving life 's riddle. It does not follow 
that because they cannot accept reincarnation 
they are doomed to remain forever without a 

133 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

solution. Assuredly in the light of what human 
reason has already achieved we are justified in 
believing that it may be trusted to solve any 
problem within the scope of its power. Nay 
more, the ethics of the intellect makes it a sin 
for reason ever to despair of itself. Better 
wait for satisfying evidence of the truth of 
reincarnation than accept it just because it 
happens to be the only theory at hand. Deeper 
than the anguish of living on without a solu- 
tion is that of having accepted one which turns 
out to be false. Deeper than our desire for a 
solution must be our desire not to be misled, 
fooled, but to know the actual truth, whatever 
it may be, and then adjust ourselves to it. 
Furthermore, in so far as the belief in reincar- 
nation is made to rest on its power to "grat- 
ify our sense of justice,' ' the belief has only a 
sentimental foundation — on a par with the 
second of those "minor" foundations for the 
faith in a future life, discussed in the first 
chapter. 

Far be it from me to dogmatize upon this 
doctrine of reincarnation, but I cannot ignore 
the fact that it is by no means established. 
Most thinkers do not accept it. Indeed it hangs 
in the air and compares unfavorably with the 

134 



REINCARNATION 

spiritistic hypothesis for which at least some 
suggestion of a basis exists in those mysterious 
phenomena that won over Professors Lodge and 
Crookes to acceptance of that hypothesis. To 
say, as some theosophists do, they "know" they 
shall reincarnate, they are "conscious of it," 
' ' supersensuously aware of it," is simply to 
abuse the dictionary and impart into words 
more meaning than they can lawfully bear. No 
one can be said to know now a possible future 
fact. No one can be said to know a state which 
does not yet exist. Moreover if Karma "neces- 
sitates reincarnation for its complete working, ' ' 
whence came the first incarnation? Karma 
must have some character to operate upon; 
whence the first expression of character? How 
could there have been a first incarnation at all 
with no character behind it? 

In further criticism of the theosophical be- 
lief it must be said that not only have we no 
recollection of any past lives but we are with- 
out any adequate ground for believing that 
there ever were any. Mr. Sinnett tells us the 
reason we have no recollection of any past life 
is that the ethical system involved in the doc- 
trine would "fail in its operation." William 
Q. Judge, in his "Ocean of Theosophy," re- 

135 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

marked: " 'Tis a wise provision that we can- 
not remember because, if we did we would be 
very miserable recalling the bad deeds of former 
lives and realizing that the process of release 
through rebirth is much longer than we imag- 
ined." 1 So Mme. Blavatsky, in her "Key to 
Theosophy," declared that "we do not remem- 
ber because our ego when reincarnated is pro- 
vided with a new body, a new brain, a new 
memory, hence it would be absurd to expect 
this memory to remember what it had never 
recorded/ ' The brain, she adds, is "the in- 
strument for the memory of the ego and being 
new in each life the ego can use it only for the 
new life up to its capacity." 

Well, if all memory of my temptations, strug- 
gles, disciplines, aspirations is to be forever 
blotted out, then all the moral value of the 
growth-process is lost for me. "Memory," 
says Mme. Blavatsky, "is not an essential ele- 
ment of responsible personality," but I hold 
that no moral responsibility can exist where con- 
tinuity of memory does not obtain. 

If, when I reincarnate, I have no recollection 
of what I have suffered and conquered, of what 
I have attempted and failed to achieve, then the 

1 William Judge : "The Ocean of Theosophy," p. 76. 
136 



EEINCARNATION 

whole significance of moral progress is lost for 
me. Had I to believe that I am to return to 
earth and at the same time forget all about my 
former life, forget who I was, the steps of my 
development, who my dearest ones were and 
who the master-inspirers of my life, I certainly 
could not look upon it as something desirable, it 
would mean absolutely nothing to me. Surely, 
without memory of personal identity, any sub- 
sequent earth-life would be robbed of all ethical 
significance. Why should I take any interest in 
the personality that is to be domiciled in my 
"soul-substance" at some future time, or in him 
who occupied it in some bygone period? What 
we understand by moral responsibility becomes 
a pale abstraction if there be no personal con- 
tinuance from one earth-life to the next, no 
thread on which to hold the beads of expe- 
rience. 

Notwithstanding the denial of memory by 
Mme. Blavatsky and others, and the reasons 
they have given for our forgetfulness of past 
lives, the claim to have retained memory of ear- 
lier incarnations is put forth by a number of 
theosophists. Their leading present-day rep- 
resentative has recommended " inward- turned 
meditation" as a sure means for recovering lost 

137 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

memories of past lives. Her own experience 
and that of certain friends has been such that 
they have "compared notes' ' and found they 
" recognized each other through the millennia 
of the past. ' ' * Say what one will of so as- 
tounding a claim the fact remains that it has 
never yet been subjected to expert critical in- 
vestigation and that most minds confess they 
are without any such memories. Over against 
Mrs. Besant 's experience and that of her friends 
we must register the confession of those theos- 
ophists who, on comparing independently writ- 
ten notes on experiences in past lives, found 
that they agreed in not a single particular. As 
Mrs. Besant herself rightly says, the claim to 
have recollection of a past incarnation can be 
true only for the person who makes it, it is no 
proof to another. And even if we grant that 
there are a few persons who think they remem- 
ber an earlier incarnation it would not prove 
the reality of that incarnation, simply because 
the identity of personality cannot be traced 
through the succession of lives. What we see 
in physics has no parallel in psychics. Heat, 
for example, may reappear as electricity, or as 
light, and the reincarnation, as it were, can be 

1 Mrs. Besant : "Popular Lectures on Theosophy," p. 63. 
138 



KEINCARNATION 

proved because the identity of substance can be 
traced, throughout its successive changes, by an 
onlooker. But such an onlooker is lacking in 
the case of the successive editions of the human 
self. 

Modern psychology has acquainted us with 
the belief that every sensible impression is 
stored in recesses of the mind and capable of 
being recalled in an hypnotic or a trance state. 
But if on returning to our normal condition we 
know nothing of what we recalled in the abnor- 
mal state, how can we be sure that the alleged 
memories are genuine 1 And if we fail to re- 
call deeply stored experiences in our present 
life how can we hope to remember others still 
more deeply stored and said to be related to 
an earlier life? Strange that theosophists, 
whose professed training has given them keener, 
subtler perception, more penetrating spiritual 
intuition, have thrown no light on the vexed 
question of prenatal memory. Arbitrary state- 
ments concerning it and the "astral body" and 
the "immortal triune' ' personality do not help 
us; they have no evidential value. Similarly, 
the reiterated affirmation that return to earth 
is absolutely indispensable to the perfecting of 
character through experience must be set down 

139 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

as a gratuitous assumption. What warrant is 
there for assuming that conditions beyond this 
life are "altogether different" from those on 
earth and that "unless we return to earth for 
another birth we are robbed of our priceless 
heritage of human life ' ' 2 What right have we 
to suppose that "our garnered wisdom is use- 
less' ' unless we come back to earth to make use 
of what we have stored? When Mrs. Besant 
declares that there is no opportunity to use this 
wisdom in another world, 1 she presumes to know 
what is still hidden from human minds. What 
justification can there be for making reincarna- 
tion or the orthodox Heaven and Hell the sole 
alternatives open to us in our thought of what 
the future has in store for us? We are by no 
means forced to choose between theosophy and 
orthodoxy, either for an interpretation of moral 
responsibility or for a doctrine of the hereafter. 
Instead of explaining the character and condi- 
tion into which we are born by pointing to past 
and future lives on earth we may well present 
the polar opposite theory, while recognizing, in 
all humility, that it does not solve all the 
perplexing riddles of the moral universe. No 
theory has yet been worked out equal to doing 

1 Besant : '^Popular Lectures on Theosophy," pp. 38, 39. 
140 



REINCARNATION 

that and at the same time acceptable to all who 
can pass judgment upon its worth. The theo- 
sophical view certainly looks plausible and it 
would undoubtedly solve many a dark problem 
of the moral order if it were true. But we are 
without a single solid reason for believing it to 
be true. Over against the theosophical inter- 
pretation of moral responsibility in terms of 
Karma and reincarnation, I would take the 
ground that we humans are not responsible for 
the good or bad qualities with which we were 
born into the world. I hold that, so far as 
moral merit is concerned, each one of us starts 
life regardless of antecedents. If, for example 
I have been born with a pronounced craving 
for intoxicants I am not morally responsible for 
that craving. On the contrary, I am respon- 
sible only for the degree to which I yield to it, 
for the effort I put forth to master it. No mat- 
ter what my "brute-inheritance" or my hu- 
man-inheritance may be, I can try to control it, 
to change it, and, what is more, I am conscious 
of moral responsibility for such effort because 
within each human being there is a constant 
residuum of capacity for improvement no mat- 
ter how many times he fails. The lower ani- 
mals have their respective traits unalterably 

141 



FAITH IN A FUTUBE LIFE 

fixed, but not so Man. Within his power it ever 
lies to "look upward, working out the beast and 
let the ape and tiger die." If, therefore, I have 
been born with miserly or murderous propensi- 
ties I am no more morally responsible for these 
than I am for the features of my face. But I 
am responsible for the measure of assent I give 
to these propensities, for the extent to which I 
adopt them into my own will, for the struggle 
I put forth to conquer them and be master of 
my fate, even as I am responsible for the ex- 
pression my face wears. We all are born with 
both attractive and repulsive qualities, but 
moral goodness and badness does not consist 
in the possession of these qualities ; it consists 
only in what we do with them. Nor does our 
true self reside in any evil quality that we pos- 
sess save as we yield to it and take it into our 
will. To put forth our true self, our thought 
power and our will power, that is the very es- 
sence of moral worth in us and never can there 
be an end to the developing of such worth. For 
we pursue a fleeing goal ; the ideal flies ever be- 
fore us and it is most passionately pursued 
when it seems furthest away. Life is growth 
and it is life only while there is growth. All our 
powers of thought and will would atrophy and 

142 



KEINCAENATION 

die were they not constantly revitalized by fresh 
deeds of service and new reachings out to the 
infinite truth. A Nirvana of statical perfection 
might have its attraction for tired souls, but 
once rested and refreshed they would wish to 
resume the upward way. 

Eeviewing the ground we have covered in 
criticism of reincarnation and the allied doc- 
trine of Karma, we conclude that as compared 
with the corresponding teaching of orthodox 
Christianity we infinitely prefer the theosophi- 
cal view. Yet, by reason of the grave objec- 
tions which we must register against the rein- 
carnation hypothesis, we have no alternative 
but to reject it as fully as we do the Christian 
conception of Heaven and Hell. The founda- 
tion for faith in personal continuity is as un- 
satisfying in the one system as in the other. If 
reincarnation be u a fact," as alleged by theos- 
ophists, the burden of proof still rests with 
them. Until something of genuine evidential 
value shall have been adduced in support of the 
doctrine we have no alternative but to stamp it 
unproven and build our faith in a future life on 
some more satisfying foundation. 



VIII 

THE FOUNDATION IN MORAL EXPERIENCE 

We began our series of inquiries with an ex- 
amination of three minor bases on which the 
faith in a future life has been made to rest. 
We saw that all three are defective in one or 
more particulars. 

The alleged universality of the faith gives us 
no warrant for its acceptance, because it is not 
universal and, even if it were, that would not 
prove it to be true. 

The alleged universal instinctive desire for a 
future life is an equally unsatisfactory founda- 
tion because not only is the desire far from uni- 
versal, but even were it everywhere entertained 
and instinctively, that would not guarantee its 
fulfillment any more than in the case of other 
instinctive desires. 

The testimony of intuition has probative 
value only for those who acknowledge such a 
faculty and find it apprizing them of immortal- 
ity. For those who confess themselves un- 

144 



MOKAL EXPEEIENCE 

aware of any faculty within them that tran- 
scends reason and gives them direct knowledge 
of a future life, for all such persons this founda- 
tion will make no appeal. Intuition serves as 
a valid basis in the estimation of intuitionists 
but not at all in the opinion of those who see in 
reason man's only and ultimate instrument for 
determining what is true. 

As for the Christian basis, the alleged resur- 
rection of Jesus from the grave, this, we have 
seen, has no evidential value because, according 
to the Christian view, Jesus differed in hind as 
well as in degree from all other human beings. 
And even were Jesus only a man, with no super- 
natural element in his personality (as the 
Synoptics suggest), his alleged resurrection 
would merely prove that not all men are sub- 
ject to death. But behind these reasons for 
renouncing the Christian foundation lies the se- 
rious objection that the resurrection, which is 
offered as proof of the immortality of all be- 
lievers, is itself in need of being proved. 

Materialism, we have seen, fails utterly to 
substantiate the claim to have disproved the 
reality of a future life, a claim based on the 
false belief that brain and thought are related 
as cause and effect. Two great natural laws 

145 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

oppose the view that death ends all. The first 
of these is the conservation and correlation of 
energy, or "the persistence of force' ' as Spen- 
cer termed it. Cosmic economy is snch that no 
form of force, be it electric, chemic, thermic, 
ever enters the void of nothingness, bnt changes 
only its form, leaving the snm total of energy 
the same as before. Mental energy, it would 
seem, must obey the same principle of inde- 
structibility. True, certain materialists have 
sought to maintain that, at death, mind-force 
becomes transformed into "correlated amounts 
of physical energy. ' ' But were this the case it 
would mean a violation of the law of the per- 
sistence of force and what is more, no such ma- 
terialistic transformation of mental into physi- 
cal force has ever been observed at the moment 
of death. 

The second great fact which stands in opposi- 
tion to the idea of annihilation is the "discon- 
tinuity of matter," already referred to in the 
lecture on materialism. Its representative, 
Haeckel, claimed that the dissolution of the 
nerve cells and atoms at death, necessarily 
ended the soul life which is but the "mind-sides 
of the atoms." But the cerebral atoms, sup- 
posed to "create and maintain thought" by the 

146 



MOEAL EXPERIENCE 

" aggregation of their mind-sides,' ' are found to 
be not in contact at all but separated by gaps, 
thus disproving the materialistic contention as 
to the cause of consciousness, memory and all 
other mental processes. In short, there is 
something subtler than matter in the human 
body and without this subtler something, which 
forms a continuous, imponderable, invisible, 
active substance, awareness and sensation 
would be impossible — a substance to which Pro- 
fessor McDougall of Oxford has given the name 
"mentiferous ether,' ' corresponding to the 
"luminiferous ether" of the interstellar spaces 
affirmed by physicists. This "mentiferous 
ether" is thus the bond uniting flesh with pure 
thought. And, for aught we know, when our 
earthly life ends this psychic etheric organism, 
the substratum of the soul, may betake itself 
otherwhere and manifest itself otherwise ; a not 
unreasonable theory which Coues and Cope 
and Jevons have indorsed. "For all science 
knows," said Professor Jevons, " there may be 
a psychical body disengaged when the physical 
body dissolves and decays and there may be in 
the interstellar spaces the scene of an intelli- 
gent activity such as we have never dreamed of 
on earth. ' ' Elsewhere the same scientist says : 

147 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

' l Science does nothing to reduce the number of 
strange things that we may believe. Every 
step I have advanced in science has removed the 
difficulties of believing in life after death by dis- 
closing to me the infinite possibilities of Na- 
ture. ' ' Science accepting the challenge of ma- 
terialism to undermine her claim has succeeded 
so completely that not a vestige of reason re- 
mains for the belief that the reality of personal 
survival of death has been disproved. 

The foundation on which spiritualism has 
rested the faith in a future life, viz., the phe- 
nomena of "spirit-intercourse," has been con- 
siderably weakened by the results of psychical 
research, showing that many, and indeed nearly 
all, of these phenomena may be accounted for 
without the aid of spirits. On the other 
hand the observations and experiments con- 
ducted under the auspices of the Society for 
Psychical Research have not resulted either in 
furnishing a new foundation or in verifying the 
spiritistic hypothesis. Nor, again, has the al- 
leged reality and peculiar character and activ- 
ity of the "subliminal self/' as set forth by 
Myers, given us a satisfying substitute-foun- 
dation for that of spiritualism. On the con- 
trary, there are, as we have seen, grave difficul- 

148 



MOEAL EXPEBIENCE 

ties in the way of accepting Myers ' theory, quite 
as insurmountable as those which spiritism has 
to face. Whatever further progress in the 
field of psychical research may reveal, the fact 
remains that hitherto it has not supplied more 
than hints, intimations, suggestions of human 
immortality, and the basis on which faith in it 
has been made to rest satisfies only a very lim- 
ited number of seekers after truth. No psy- 
chical research has yet succeeded in showing 
that the alleged spirits are discarnate, i. e., that 
their activities are independent of material con- 
ditions. And all our experience goes to show 
that mental processes are always found associ- 
ated with physiological changes. 

In the words of Sir Oliver Lodge, "Not one 
bit of precise evidence in favor of the hypothe- 
sis of discarnate intelligence has been forthcom- 
ing," so that the burden of proof for the possi- 
bility of immortality rests with those who hold 
that consciousness can exist without a brain. 
Certainly in the light of our present knowledge 
we are forced to admit that for immortality we 
have no objective evidence. 

Theosophy, discarding the traditional con- 
ception of the future life as perpetual residence 
in a localized heaven or hell, substitutes the doc- 

149 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

trine of reincarnation, or successive rebirths 
into earthly existence. Theosophists base this 
belief on the law of Karma which, for its com- 
plete working out of the demands of justice, re- 
quires the individual's return to earth again 
and again until the process of achieving perfect 
requital for good and bad deeds has been com- 
pleted. But while this theory has a most at- 
tractive aspect by reason of its seeming fitness 
to solve many a dark riddle of human experi- 
ence, we are wholly without adequate grounds 
for believing it to be true. Not only are the vast 
majority of mankind without the slightest recol- 
lection of any previous lives, but what is more, 
we have no reason for maintaining that there 
ever have been any. To be sure we want those 
dark riddles to be satisfactorily solved, even as 
we crave some sort of recompense for those 
whose lot in life is so painfully different from 
what it would seem it ought to be if justice be 
really at the heart of things. Yet, to accept a 
theory merely because it gratifies our passion- 
ate demand for justice, or because it puts us in 
possession of .some explanation and thus relieves 
our sense of perplexity and suspense, is scarcely 
compatible with the ethics of truth-seeking. 
Nor, indeed, do such motives for acceptance of 

150 



MORAL EXPERIENCE 

a theory lead to anything more than a senti- 
mental basis for our faith in a future life, or 
lives; a basis every whit as objectionable and 
unsatisfying as the pragmatism which urges in- 
dividuals to regard as true the beliefs which 
they have found helpful to them. *As though 
there were a necessary connection between the 
truth and the usefulness of beliefs; as though 
the truth of a proposition were proportional to 
its utility ! 

Having thus reviewed the ground covered in 
the preceding lectures, let us turn to the one 
remaining foundation which we planned to con- 
sider, the foundation in moral experience. 
This, in my judgment, must take precedence 
over all other foundations that may be named. 
For, while it, no more than they, gives us dem- 
onstration, it does seem to make immortality an 
ethical necessity. 

But before addressing ourselves to a consid- 
eration of the nature and worth of this founda- 
tion, it behooves us to guard against a possible 
misunderstanding. In discussing the ethical 
attitude to modern occultism it was pointed out 
that this does not mean the attitude of the Eth- 
ical Movement toward it. So here, again, it 
would be a serious mistake to construe the eth- 

151 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

ical foundation for faith in a future life as syn- 
onymous with that of the Ethical Movement. 
For, in truth, this movement offers no founda- 
tion whatever for that faith. It dare not offer 
one without being false to its own distinctive 
and fundamental position of neutrality on all 
debatable questions. Eepresentatives of the 
Ethical Movement are wholly free to entertain 
and to advocate any argument they choose for 
the faith in a future life. Equally free they 
are to accept no foundation and to make it 
known, publicly, that they are agnostics on this 
subject. Consequently it should be clearly un- 
derstood that no one but the speaker is com- 
mitted by any pronouncements on the basis for 
belief or disbelief in immortality. My views 
happen not to coincide with those of most of 
the leaders of Ethical Societies, but my right 
to express my honest thought is as unques- 
tioned as theirs, provided I refrain from mak- 
ing the movement sponsor for my views. 

Like Professor Adler, I hold that the sole sub- 
stantial basis for faith in a future life is to be 
found in the moral nature of man, in a moral 
experience which every human being may have. 
It is that the more deeply and intensely we live 
the moral life, the more fully persuaded we be- 

152 



MOEAL EXPEKIENCE 

come that there is something in us which can- 
not perish. And if to this experience we are 
privileged to add another, namely, relationship 
to some other soul, one who lives on a high spir- 
itual plane, one who inspires, uplifts, exalts us, 
then we are forced to feel that this life cannot 
go to the void of nothingness, that here also, in 
this rare personality, is something that must 
survive. It is in this twofold moral experience 
that I find the surest and most satisfying ground 
for the belief in personal survival of death. 
One cannot live an empty, ephemeral, selfish, 
worldly life and then expect, by some process of 
intellectual speculation, to arrive at this belief. 
You get it only when you find in yourself, or in 
some other soul, something infinitely worth pre- 
serving. It was their immediate perception of 
holiness in Jesus that made his disciples so sure 
of his escape from bondage unto death. And 
their intense consciousness of the possibility of 
such holiness in themselves persuaded them of 
their own immortality. That their Master, the 
incarnation of spiritual greatness, should be 
shut up in Sheol, among all the rest of the dead, 
was to them simply unthinkable. Equally un- 
thinkable it was that they who had caught the 
contagion of that holiness should not share 

153 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

eternity with him. Moral experience was their 
foundation for faith in a future life. 

Well enough for the sensualist, the sybarite, 
the bon vivant to say, "I have had a good time 
for a goodly number of years, I am satisfied and 
ready to pass out of life into nothingness. ' ' 
"Well enough for the men and women who have 
lived for the lower satisfactions to feel indif- 
ferent to immortality. But for those who have 
dedicated and devoted themselves to the higher 
satisfactions of life, for those who have tasted 
intellectual, or esthetic, or spiritual achieve- 
ment and who know that the very best they have 
attained is a mere circumstance compared to 
what they feel they could attain, for them dis- 
belief in immortality is the most difficult thing 
in the world. Like Plato and Dante and Goethe 
and Browning, they desire immortality above 
all else because of the moral experience they 
have undergone and the passion for further 
progress it has inspired. In the estimation of 
such persons, desire for or acquiescence in per- 
sonal annihilation at death is set down as evi- 
dence of defective spiritual breeding. What 
nobler wish can a man or woman cherish than 
to continue the task of spiritual sculpture, to go 
on after death hewing, out of the rough marble 

154 



MORAL EXPERIENCE 

of life's disciplines and temptations, the statue 
of perfect character? What more ennobling 
ambition than to approach ever nearer and still 
nearer to the ultimate ideal? What manner of 
man then is he who feels satisfied with personal 
annihilation at death? Surely it is of the very 
essence of true nobility to wish to be forever 
such a being as shall help on the welfare and 
advancement of all who are capable of being 
helped. When a man tells me that he does not 
care for personal immortality, that he is satis- 
fied to pass into oblivion at death, I am forced 
to conclude that he has somehow missed the 
moral experience that compels the conviction of 
continuity for his spiritual selfhood; I am per- 
suaded that this man has never experienced 
deeper and intenser moral living from one year 
to the next. In answer to the question : Must 
we believe in immortality? they who have had 
the moral experience which is our surest foun- 
dation for the faith in a future life will reply 
with Professor Adler: We " admit that we do 
not so much desire immortality, as that we do 
not see how we can escape it ; on moral grounds 
we do not see how our being can stop short of the 
attainment marked out for it, of the goal set up 
for it"; we feel warranted in "holding fast to 

155 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

the root of our selfhood," believing that "the 
best within us, our true being, cannot perish; 
in regard to that the notion of death seems to us 
to be irrelevant. ' ' 1 

Undoubtedly, the belief in immortality is just 
now on the wane. And this, I take it, is due to 
the fact that for those who honestly face the 
belief the difficulties in the way of accepting it 
are enormous, if not insuperable. There is, for 
instance, the stumbling block created by physio- 
logical psychology which has established with 
cumulative evidence the correlation between 
mental activity and physical conditions, seeming 
to force the conclusion that consciousness can- 
not survive the cessation of physiological proc- 
esses. But in our discussion of the material- 
ist's claim we saw that there are substantial 
considerations which serve to remove this dif- 
ficulty. 

Again, there is the reckless extravagance with 
which Nature seems to create and destroy struc- 
tures without their fulfilling the purpose they 
apparently were designed to serve. Tennyson 
gave this difficulty forceful expression in his 
lament that while "considering everywhere the 
secret meaning' ' of Nature's deeds he found 

1 Adler: "Life and Destiny," the chapter on Immortality. 
156 



MORAL EXPERIENCE 

that * ' of fifty seeds she often brings but one to 
bear. ' ' But the question may fairly be asked : 
Is this alleged waste really such or is it only a 
gratuitous assumption which we with our de- 
fective knowledge have dared to affirm? My 
revered professor in philosophy, Dr. J. Clark 
Murray, has furnished us an irrefutable an- 
swer. "A charge of unreasonable extrava- 
gance," he says, " logically assumes some stand- 
ard of limitation by which excess or defect may 
be measured. But what is the position of a 
critic who arraigns Nature for unreasonable 
waste? He forgets that he has passed beyond 
the region where excess and defect of produc- 
tion can be measured by exactly denned lim- 
itations. He undertakes to measure the work 
of perfect intelligence, of intelligence unlimited 
in knowledge of reasonable ends, unlimited in 
command of the means by which such ends may 
be unerringly attained. Here, obviously, the 
category of measure, of measurable quality, ad- 
mits of no application. The infinite is measure- 
less in the strict sense of the term. 

"It is not then surprising that an attempt to 
measure the universal intelligence by finite 
standards of appreciation should betray an 
amusing niggardliness in its estimate of Na- 

157 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

ture's plan and resources. With our view lim- 
ited by human measures, creative energy must 
appear lavish in its expenditure ; but its munifi- 
cence is an indication, not of reckless waste, but 
of a wealth that is absolutely inexhaustible in 
its resources. If, therefore, millions of blos- 
soms with perfect beauty of form, arrayed in 
hues surpassing those of 'Solomon in all his 
glory/ fade away before ripening into fruit, 
there is no reason why we should lament the 
waste of their splendor and their fragrance as 
if we could measure adequately the functions as- 
signed to them in the cosmic plan, and had 
proved that there was nothing but a meaning- 
less failure in their fleeting existence. And 
though our narrow criticism may restrict the 
natural purpose of a seed to its having brought 
to bear other plants of its own kind, the crea- 
tive intelligence is not frustrated when count- 
less billions of seeds are converted into the food 
of a higher life, and thus supply the energy re- 
quired for carrying the world onward to 'that 
divine event to which the whole creation 
moves.' " 1 

A third and no less popular difficulty beset- 
ting belief in immortality is the universal as- 

1 The Standard, January, 1915. 
158 



MORAL EXPERIENCE 

sociation of mind with some form of matter. 
The reality of discarnate spirits, existing inde- 
pendently of matter, remains unproven and, in 
the light of onr acquaintance with matter, seems 
inconceivable. But surely it is conceivable that 
some form of matter may exist imperceptible 
to us and which, associated with spirit, fulfills 
the seeming requisite for the latter 's persist- 
ence. When we turn from the empirical 
to the ethical standpoint we find in the moral 
experience already described what would seem 
to be an inevitable, unassailable sanction for 
faith in a future life. 

The man of moral seriousness, who looks on 
life as a sacred privilege and trust, who has 
visions of heights to which his spiritual nature 
may climb, who has touched depths of refining 
spiritual experience — depths that are prophetic 
of others deeper still; the man who is capable 
of high and ennobling friendships, whose hori- 
zon embraces aims that are exalting and ex- 
alted, that man will look on immortality as a 
priceless boon, not because of any opportunity 
that it offers for delights and rewards, but be- 
cause of the opportunity that it offers for con- 
tinuing the task of spiritual sculpture, for 
rounding out his character, for completing the 

159 



FAITH IN A FUTUKE LIFE 

dimensions of his being, for maturing the great 
life-purpose that here on earth had time only to 
blossom, or, perchance, only to bud. For such 
a man, with such moral experience, conscious of 
ever deeper and intenser moral living, no alter- 
native is open but belief in survival of his es- 
sential spiritual selfhood, to be somehow fitted, 
equipped for further progress toward "the goal 
set up" for him, albeit he can form no visual 
image of this equipment and knows moral prog- 
ress here only in connection with brain and 
other bodily equipment. 

Consider for example, the attitude of the 
truth-seeker, who has already gone some dis- 
tance on the road of study and interpretation 
of the meaning of the world and found his 
moral nature deepened in consequence. The 
further he goes the further does he wish to go. 
To ce,ase from his noble pursuit after having 
gathered a few pebbles and shells on the shore 
of truth's illimitable sea, to go to sleep and 
never again wake, such a finale may cause no 
pang or pain to those who give little or no 
thought to the supreme human problems, but to 
the man who finds his very life in such serious 
activity with its moral concomitants, annihila- 
tion at death is simply unthinkable. 

160 



MOEAL EXPEKIENCE 

So too, the man or woman who has conceived 
a passion for some large, splendid, nnattained 
service into which all the wisdom and enthusi- 
asm already poured into lesser works of help- 
fulness shall be gathered up and multiplied and 
transfigured; how can such an one think to es- 
cape immortality? Given men and women of 
this stamp who conduct their daily lives on the 
high plane of some great and ennobling life- 
purpose, and they simply must believe in im- 
mortality. Do what they will they are irresist- 
ibly forced to the conviction that what they are 
here for, the task of self-development, will not 
be left forever unfinished at death. Do what 
they will, they are driven to the conviction that 
when, at death, there rises from their hearts the 
passionate cry, ' ' Give us the wages of going on 
and not to die," the answer will be received: 
" Enter ye into the joy of your hope fulfilled." 

Disbelievers in immortality would fain per- 
suade us that such lives are not wasted even 
though they be annihilated at death. We are 
told that such lives are " saved from annihila- 
tion by their effect upon the life of those who 
come after." * But this contention overshoots 

1 Dr. H. Neumann in "Ethical Addresses," Vol. XXI, No. 
1, p. 14. 

161 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

the mark, for wicked lives are similarly saved. 
If it be asked, Who can picture the ultimate 
outcome of a single admirable deed? and the 
purpose of the question is to show that the good 
life is not wasted though annihilated at death, 
a just reply would be : Who can picture the ul- 
timate outcome of a single vicious deed? And 
who, in view of the terrible incalculable harm 
wrought by the perpetrators of evil, would con- 
template with satisfaction the thought that 
these lives, though annihilated, have not been 
wasted? And, if it be further contended that 
the consolation of those who wrought for the 
good in vain lies in the fact that " their efforts 
made the right kind of persons out of them," we 
have to answer that this is cold comfort indeed 
if the final outcome of creation is to be annihila- 
tion of both the good souls and the good will. 

It is, then, from the realm of ethics that we 
get our most helpful light on the momentous 
question of life after death. 

What are we here for ? We are here to real- 
ize the infinite possibilities of our being, or, to 
speak more accurately, we are here to enter on 
the realization of those possibilities. This real- 
ization is the supreme good ; the will that strives 
for the supreme good is the good will, and the 

162 



MOEAL EXPERIENCE 

good will cannot die in a universe that is ra- 
tional and moral. 

Nature has written in the constitution of each 
human being the law of its life — develop the 
real that you are into the ideal you ought to be. 
Nature has imposed this moral obligation upon 
us, to strive for realization of that immanent 
ideal. But, clearly, that ideal can never be 
completely realized; it can be only eternally 
pursued. Perfection is no final, static, com- 
pleted moral state, but an evolving process. 
The ideal flies ever before us. We pursue a 
fleeing goal. Our task is one in which everlast- 
ing progress may be made, not one that can be 
finally fulfilled. 

We might compare our obligation (to develop 
the real we are into the ideal we ought to be) 
to the climbing of some great mountain, the 
peaks of which rise one above another, each in 
turn summoning us to reach its height. At each 
new level we broaden the perspective and deepen 
the content of our life, while beyond the high- 1 
est we can see are others wholly hidden from 
our view. 

Yes, the ideal is unattainable and loyal pur- 
suit of the unattainable ideal is our highest pos- 
sible attainment. As the hyperbola forever ap- 

163 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

proaclies its asymptote but cannot reach it, so 
the real we are endlessly approximates the 
ideal we ought to be, but cannot overtake it. 

Most of us only begin the upward ascent, we 
reach but a little way up the mount Perfection 
when our climb is stopped by death. Here, 
then, on the one hand, is Nature imposing upon 
us the moral obligation, "Be ye perfect,' ' real- 
ize the ideal, and here, on the other hand, is 
death stopping us in our upward march and 
seemingly bringing that moral obligation to 
naught. How, I ask, shall we solve the riddle? 
Clearly we are forced to accept one or the other 
of two alternatives ; either death is not the end 
of life and there is opportunity beyond death 
for continuing the ascent of the spiritual moun- 
tain, or else Nature defeats the end she had in 
view in the creating of man. That, I believe, 
is the logical alternative to which we are forced 
if we do close and consistent thinking. Nay, 
more, we can go one step further and say that 
the loyal, faithful soul, the soul that has been 
steadfastly loyal in the pursuit of the ideal, in 
the ascent of the mount Perfection, that soul is 
entitled to continue the pursuit when death has 
cut short the series of earthly endeavors. If 
this be a moral universe, if at the heart of the 

164 



MORAL EXPERIENCE 

universe the principle of justice obtains, then, 
I say, the loyal, faithful soul, the man or woman 
who has consecratedly pursued the ideal, is 
thereby entitled, has a right to continue that 
pursuit. If we loyally pursue the ideal and 
that pursuit is the end which Nature has de- 
creed in creating us, then she would defeat her 
end and be irrational did she allow death to cut 
off that pursuit. And if faithful pursuit con- 
stitutes a right to continue it, Nature would be 
unethical were she to disregard that right. In 
the words of Dr. F. F. Abbot, "Personal im- 
mortality is an ethical necessity.' ' And this is 
as near to demonstration as it is possible for us 
to come, in the present state of our knowledge.* 
The only rational view of our earthly pil- 
grimage is that of a process of growth, upward 
and onward endlessly, a progressus ad Parnas- 
sum. If, then, when that pilgrimage ends, our 
goal be still like a star shining in the distant 
heaven and we look up from the low plane 
of our present attainment to that star, what es- 
cape is there from the frightful unreason of 
such a situation? It is, so far as I can see, that 
death does not terminate the pilgrimage but 
that somehow, somewhere, opportunity is af- 
forded for the perpetuation of what is essen- 

165 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

tially spiritual in us, to the end that it may con- 
tinue its consecrated devotion to the supreme 
purpose of its being. 

To my reason immortality is the only possible 
solution of the mystery of life. Yet I realize 
the limited character and power of my reason 
and hence refrain from stating my faith as a 
dogma. It may be that in the universal plan 
not a single human being is accounted of suf- 
ficient value to the universe to require his pres- 
ervation. It may be that the universal plan 
provides for some altogether different solution 
than that of personal immortality. But that 
the solution will be both rational and ethical I 
am bound to believe. In the words of the most 
widely heard independent ethical lecturer of 
our time, "If there be no eternity of the sub- 
ject for whom change exists, it seems to me 
hopeless to attempt any understanding of the 
farce of life. Warmly human souls may try 
to cheat themselves into living for the good of 
all, but if the whole is a farce, wherein is any 
good for all? Each merely postpones himself 
for another and no one lives. Neither kindly 
utilitarianism nor frank hedonism can cheat us 
into imagining that the farce of life has a mean- 
ing or that there is any stronger reason for vir- 

166 



MORAL EXPERIENCE 

tue than for life, if nothing is eternal but 
change. Yet no one believes that life is a farce 
but those who follow a narrow line of reason- 
ing. If this universe were what the pessimist 
claims, it would be below the level of human life. 
No man would create such a world, no man 
would be guilty of bringing into being such a 
chaos of irrational folly and failure. If the 
universe be such, then the heart and reason, the 
highest outcome of the process, are in utter op- 
position to the whole process, which is impossi- 
ble." 1 

There is, then, a concatenation of moral ideas 
and moral experience, constituting a basis for 
belief in personal survival of death. The 
haunting sense of incompleteness of character, 
the consciousness of an infinitely perfect goal, 
the sense of a constant residuum of capacity to 
approximate it no matter how many times we 
slip back, the moral obligation Nature has im- 
posed on us to pursue it, the conviction forced 
upon us when we earnestly, ardently obey or 
when we see complete obedience in another, 
that there is something in that person, as in 
us, which cannot cease — such is the order of 
ethical thought and experience which, like the 

1 E. H. Griggs: "Meditations," pp. 189-190. 
167 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

hart, hastes my panting soul to the waterbrooks 
to quench its thirst at the eternal stream of faith 
in a future life. 

As yet, no human being knows whether mat- 
ter is a "precipitate of mind" or mind a "sub- 
limation of matter." This, in truth, is the 
measure of our ignorance that when we are 
talking of origins, we do not know exactly 
whence we came; and when we are discussing 
destiny, we do not know precisely whither we 
go. What, then, remains between these two 
ignorances? There remains the kind of be- 
havior we adopt between them. We have to 
choose whether we will live like immortals, or 
like the dayfly, dead at sundown. 

The story is told of a college president tour- 
ing the Bernese Alps, going by the Gemmi Pass 
from Badzeuck on the one side to Kandersteg 
on the other. When he reached the summit of 
the pass he looked vainly about for a path that 
would lead to his destination. All that he saw 
was a narrow, faintly-marked trail on the sur- 
face of the huge granite boulder, stretching 
down the steep mountain side. Such a trail it 
was as mountain sheep might risk but hardly to 
be ventured upon by human feet. Concluding 

168 



MORAL EXPERIENCE 

he had missed the right road the pedestrian was 
about to retrace his steps when he spied a little 
Swiss boy abont forty feet away. " Where is 
Kandersteg?" the president exclaimed. To 
which the lad replied, "I don't know, sir, but 
[pointing to this hazardous trail] that is the 
way to it. ' ' Without in the least realizing it, the 
boy had summarized the whole practical phil- 
osophy of life. If you are on the right road you 
don't need to see your destination. In such a 
situation — and it is symbolic of that in which we 
all find ourselves no matter what our vocation or 
lot in life may be — there are only three alterna- 
tives open to us: First, we may sit down, if 
our inertia be in excess of our motive power. 
Second, we may turn back, if our desire to 
reminisce be greater than our prophetic pro- 
clivity. Third, we may go bravely and trust- 
fully on. In the sacred name of the latent pos- 
sibilities that reside in each one of us, and of 
the constant residuum of capacity for progress 
that is present in even the lowest of us, I say, 
let us go on and take the ethics of an immortal 
being for our guide. 



IX 

MISUSES OF THE FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

The closing thought of the preceding chapter 
irresistibly raises the question : What is meant 
by the ethics of an immortal being! And if 
our treatment of the most compelling of rea- 
sons for faith in a future life is to have any 
measure of completeness we must needs devote 
a final chapter to this practical moral issue, 
the kind of daily living that devolves on one 
who has found in moral experience the strong- 
est basis for his belief in immortality, who feels 
forced by the logic of his thought to see in im- 
mortality an ethical necessity. 

But before addressing ourselves to this clos- 
ing question, there are certain inferences which 
I fear may have been drawn from one or an- 
other statement made in the preceding chap- 
ter, against which I would fain put you on your 
guard. These possible inferences are: First, 
that devotion to the moral life is conditioned by 
anticipation of immortality. Second, that im- 

170 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

mortality may be made a motive for right liv- 
ing. Third, that life is not worth living unless 
there be a hereafter. Fourth, that immortality 
is solely for those who earn it. 

To avert the possibility of misunderstanding 
and to clarify our thought upon these four 
points, permit me to speak briefly upon each in 
turn. 

1. To make expectation of personal survival 
of death a condition of moral living must be set 
down as a deplorable- misuse of the faith in a 
life to come. 

In his first letter to the Corinthians the 
Apostle Paul expressed himself in unqualified 
terms on this relation of morality to immortal- 
ity. He took the position that unless there be 
life after death men are warranted in living 
like animals. His precise words are these: 
"If the dead be not raised let us eat and drink 
for tomorrow we die. ' ' 

The Eoman Catholic, W. H. Mallock, in his 
book, "Is Life Worth Living,' ' expresses his 
agreement with the Apostle's position and con- 
tends that "the only reason why we should be- 
have ourselves here on earth is that the Al- 
mighty has prepared a future for us in which it 
will go hard with us if we do not. ' ' 

171 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

Similarly, the free-thinker, Goldwin Smith, 
took the position that a " moral interregnum" 
would ensue were the belief in a hereafter to 
disappear. To the transeendentalist, Max Mul- 
ler, the moral life without immortality was "like 
an arch resting on one pillar, or like a bridge 
that ends in an abyss. ' ' 

Many a college student and young business 
man, echoing Paul's proposition, asks in all se- 
riousness, "Suppose I do gamble and drink, 
suppose I am somewhat loose in my relations 
with men and with women, what difference can 
it make, if there be no hereafter?" Well, both 
from a selfish and from an unselfish stand- 
point it makes a vast difference. Both physi- 
cal and moral health, longevity and real wel- 
fare are conditioned by moral living as the ex- 
perience of centuries has proved and no- 
where perhaps so forcefully exemplified as in 
"Faust." 

From the unselfish standpoint it makes a 
great difference whether or not we choose the 
moral life because our life is our influence. 
"We live in our radiations." The helpfulness 
of our influence is the measure of our living. 
The man who lives the immoral life in secret 
may fancy himself exempt in this respect, but 

172 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

private vices are public nuisances in that they 
are clogs in the wheel of social progress. 

When Frederick Eobertson was agonizing in 
the dungeon of doubt over the existence of God 
and the reality of a future life, he came at last 
to the noble conclusion that "on any theory it 
is better to be brave than cowardly, truthful 
than dishonest, pure than immoral, generous 
than selfish." And on the basis of this provi- 
sional morality he eventually built up a new 
and grander faith than any he had held before. 
Find me the man who, with no forethought re- 
garding his personal survival of death, has 
tasted the sweetness of human helpfulness, of 
pure disinterested service and self-sacrifice, and 
who will say that he would have acted differ- 
ently had he been persuaded that there is no fu- 
ture life. There is a joy which is more than 
happiness, a peace that defies description, in 
the life of service lived wholly apart from con- 
siderations of a hereafter. To make morality 
dependent on immortality is to degrade both; 
what is more, it is absurd. Were I a dayfly, 
I should naturally put as much as possible into 
my day. Were this the be-all and end-all of our 
life here, morality would still be the means of 
maintaining the social order, the means of real- 

173 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

izing the fullest life possible. The man who 
cannot put the faith in a hereafter to better 
use than a bribe to selfishness does not deserve 
to have the faith. Nay, more, when morality is 
thus degraded the noblest argument for im- 
mortality is gone. For what is this but the in- 
conceivability of the extinction of an unselfish 
soul, whereas the extinction of creatures who 
could not keep the moral law except for the 
prize of immortality is not at all inconceivable. 
There is something morally binding in sym- 
pathy, love, and sacrifice, regardless of what 
happens to us after death, and the stars in 
heaven are not so grand as man acting in obedi- 
ence to this pure and perfect impulse. We owe 
it to ourselves as self-respecting beings, we owe 
it to our fellow-men of today, and to the genera- 
tions yet to be, to make the most possible out 
of ourselves, no matter what the ultimate far- 
off issue of it all may be. By so doing, we can- 
cel part of our debt to the past. The welfare 
and happiness of future ages depends in some 
measure on each one of us and I, for one, would 
rather live a helpful, serviceful life, knowing 
this is to be the end of it all, than to live a mean, 
selfish, sensual life just because there is to be no 
personal immortality. At the same time one is 

174 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

entitled to believe that this age-long struggle to- 
ward the ever better, which is evolution, will not 
end in chaos but rather culminate in something 
that shall prove the process to have been worth 
while, and that for human souls this something 
will be at least as good as personal immortality. 
Thus, over against the demoralizing doctrine 
of the Apostle Paul which makes immortality 
the sine qua non of moral behavior, we would set 
the saying of the scientist Clifford: "Do I 
seem to say ; let us eat and drink for tomorrow 
we die 1 Far from it, on the contrary I say, let 
us take hands and help, for this day, we are 
alive together." And with this inspiriting ut- 
terance we may couple the memorable remark 
of Charles Darwin, "The whole subject [immor- 
tality] is beyond the scope of man's intellect; 
but man can do his duty." To bolster up mo- 
rality by appeal to what is still an uncertainty 
and may, perchance, prove to be an illusion, is 
unwise and imprudent, to say the least. Paul's 
assertion that finite beings cannot live the moral 
life except by keeping an eye on another world 
beyond is effectively contradicted by the re- 
mark of the Hegelian Bradley to the effect that 
it would be "a mere detail to the universe" if 
human beings were in such a condition that they 

175 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

must deteriorate unless they believe in a here- 
after. " It is a rule," he says, "that a species 
of beings out of agreement with their environ- 
ment should deteriorate, and it is well for them 
to make way for another race constituted more 
rationally and happily." If morality will not 
work without satisfaction being afforded to the 
demand for a future life, we must answer : So 
much the worse for morality which thereby 
proves itself desperately in need of reformed 
concepts. 

Why should life be deemed mean because it 
is brief or why should we be thought disin- 
clined to live other than as animals unless there 
be for us a "second life"? Surely we must 
look upon Paul as having perpetrated a gross 
libel on man's moral nature when he attributed 
to all mankind surrender of morality if immor- 
tality be not guaranteed. 

Twenty centuries before Paul an unknown 
Hindu seer proclaimed a nobler standard of 
ethical behavior in words as exalting as Paul's 
are degrading. "Virtue is what a man owes 
to himself and though there were no God to 
punish and no Heaven to reward virtue would 
none the less be the binding law of life. ' ' Nor 
can it be questioned that there are many peo- 

176 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

pie capable of fulfilling every demand of mo- 
rality though they believe that death ends all. 
On the other hand it may be questioned whether 
a moral life that has reached the stage of pure 
disinterestedness can long maintain its high en- 
thusiasms and evolutions of conduct without the 
religious idealism that looks across the gulf of 
death to continuance of its ennobling pursuit of 
the ideal. Still more may it be doubted whether 
much that is worthy to be called religion would 
survive if faith in a future of opportunity for 
spiritual progress were to pass out of human 
thought. 

Tennyson went so far as to say (to his friend 
Knowles) that were this faith to prove illusory, 
he " would shake his fist in the face of Almighty 
God and tell Him that he cursed Him," so per- 
suaded was the poet of man's need of the in- 
spiration which the faith affords. I stress the 
word inspiration because Tennyson was averse 
to regarding immortality either as a condition 
or as a motive for right living. 

2. To do what is right because of fear of fu- 
ture punishment or hope of future reward may 
be prudent 7 but it is not moral. Yet Jesus, if 
he has been correctly reported and the meaning 
of his words is not misunderstood, frequently 

177 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

appealed to these sentiments of hope and fear 
when bidding men live the moral life. Again 
and again in the Synoptic Gospels we meet this 
misuse of the faith in man's survival of death. 
"Do good and your reward shall be great." 
1 ' Do good to them that hate you else have ye no 
reward from your Father which is in Heaven. ' ' 
" Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is 
your reward in Heaven. ' ' " Take heed that ye 
do not your alms before men to be seen of them 
else have ye no reward from your Father which 
is in Heaven. ' ' So also the author of the epistle 
to the Hebrews bids his readers i ' run with pa- 
tience the race that is set before them, looking 
unto Jesus, who for the sake of the joy that was 
set before him, endured the cross, despising the 
shame.' ' No one, I am sure, will construe the 
quoting of these passages as intended to cast a 
slur on their authors. Nothing could be further 
from my purpose. They simply show how, in 
the preaching of the first century, the thought 
of the hereafter was made a motive for right 
living. No sooner was Christianity ecclesi- 
astically organized than it laid special emphasis 
on this phase of Christian ethics and in the six- 
teenth century it was deliberately shaped into 
a business proposition. Seats in Heaven were 

178 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

made purchasable and escape from Hell was 
guaranteed on payment of a stipulated fee. 
Eeal estate was exchanged for salvation. 
Promissory notes were presented to priests in 
return for reserved seats in the kingdom be- 
yond the skies. Collateral security in the form 
of extra masses and aves was offered to 
those who could turn into the papal treasury a 
goodly portion of their wealth. Thus did min- 
isters of the Christian religion trade upon the 
hopes and fears of their subjects. Leo X 
wanted to complete the building of St. Peter's 
in Eome and, as there were no funds available, 
he put immortality into the market, making ad- 
mission to Heaven depend on a contribution to 
the building fund. This outrage it was that 
incensed the hearts of Wesel and Wessel, of 
John Goch and Martin Luther, and precipitated 
the Protestant Eeformation. Better, thought 
these reformers, that the hope of immortality 
be blotted out than that it be subjected to such 
unhallowed, unscrupulous, papal schemes. Bet- 
ter that the faith in a future life be abolished 
than that it be identified with such sordid aims 
and ends. To be sure these grosser forms of 
the abuse of the faith in immortality have be- 
come a memory, but the abuse itself is far from 

179 



FAITH IN A FUTUBE LIFE 

extinct. We see it, for example, in the theo- 
logical appeals of the Salvation Army and in 
the peroration of many an orthodox sermon. 
Over against the Christian's resorting to 
Heaven and Hell in his plea for moral living, I 
would put the noble apothegm of the Koman 
scriptures: "We do not love virtue because it 
gives us pleasure, but it gives us pleasure be- 
cause we love it. The wise man will not sin, 
though both gods and men overlook his deed, 
because it is not through fear of punishment 
that he abstains from sin. Fearless pleasure 
is his who knows the laws of God and rejoices 
in this life without any concern as to what the 
future may bring. ' ' 

It may be worth while in passing to note that 
the popular conception of the efficacy of the 
appeal to Hell is fallacious. People deplore 
the decline and decay of the doctrine of Hell 
on the ground that it is a most useful check on 
immorality. I should willingly share this la- 
ment if I believed that the doctrine had been a 
powerful promoter of morality. But history 
does not bear out this assumption. The truth 
is, people were not better in the days when 
everybody believed in the theological Hell ; they 
were not so good as they are now when hardly 

180 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

anybody believes in it. The morals of today 
are obviously better than those of a century 
ago and they ought to be worse if the belief in 
Hell had anything to do with it. But the fact 
is that it had little or nothing to do with it. 
Improvement was achieved not through that 
part of the Christian religion which is repulsive 
and superstitious, but rather through its be- 
nign and gracious elements, the personality of 
Jesus and his gospel of love. Love, not fear, 
has been the chief factor in the moral advances 
of Christendom. 

Surely a truly noble nature never yet was led 
to sustain his devotion to the moral life on 
grounds of either punishment or reward. 
Surely it is a misnomer to call that act virtuous 
which is done for the sake of reward or to avoid 
punishment. Surely we must say that the man 
who is honest, chaste and unselfish because he 
expects future reward or because he fears fu- 
ture punishment is shrewd, sagacious, politic, 
prudent; but moral we will never call him till 
he rises to the plane of pure disinterestedness. 
To be moral a man must love virtue freely and 
not for the dowry she may bring. It was her 
profound conviction of this truth that led St. 
Theresa to express the wish that in one hand 

181 



FAITH IN A FUTUEE LIFE 

she might hold a pail of water and in the other 
a flaming torch, to extinguish the flames of Hell 
with the one and burn up the glories of Heaven 
with the other, so that men might do what is 
right regardless of all prudential, calculating 
considerations. Matthew Arnold gave expres- 
sion to the same wish when he wrote : 

Hath man no second life ? 

Pitch this one high. 

Sits there no judge in heaven our sins to see ? 

More strictly then the inward judge obey. 

The poet Longfellow celebrated the religion 
of certain sculptors who bestowed just as much 
care on the invisible as on the visible parts of 
their work, because, they said, "The gods see ev- 
erywhere. ' ' But grander by far is the religion 
of Timothy, the Welsh stonemason, who, when it 
was suggested that he should toss off a bit of 
work carelessly because no one would see it, 
replied: "Ah, but I would see it." That is 
the highest piety, that is pure religion. To be 
your own divine authority ; to let the voice of the 
Eternal speak through your voice; to stand in 
reverent awe before your own sacred person- 
ality ; to be just yourself, though all the rest of 
the world be cruel ; to let love rule in your heart, 

182 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

though beset on every side by hate ; to be loyal 
to what you think is truth, even though it cost 
you the loss of social position, of friends, yea, 
even of family ties; to be yourself faithful, 
true, incorruptible, not because it will bring you 
wealth, or fame, or pleasure, or prosperity, or 
«ase, but because you cannot be otherwise, be- 
cause you could not lift up your head without 
a blush, because you feel that you are in this 
world to promote goodness rather than wicked- 
ness, because you want to make harmony where 
there is discord and beauty where there is blem- 
ish : this, I take it, is the very acme of religious 
attainment. Nothing so truly makes us divine 
and nothing in all the world is so grand or glori- 
ous as man living thus in obedience to the sub- 
lime dictates of his own soul. We repudiate, 
then, as altogether unethical, both the view 
which makes the hereafter a condition of moral 
living and that which sees in it a motive there- 
for. 

3. No less emphatically, it seems to me, must 
we repudiate the kindred doctrine: "Life is 
not worth living if there be no hereafter. ' ' 

To wake up on such a beautiful morning as 
was this, to see the beauties and inspirations 
of external nature in their countless manifesta- 

183 



FAITH IN A FUTUKE LIFE 

tions ; to read the great and wondrous story of 
human progress, to feel oneself a part of that 
great, grand, forward, upward march of hu- 
manity; to be in some small measure a con- 
tributor to this progress ; to taste, even though 
for only a moment, that sweetest, divinest thing 
in all the world, human love in its highest and 
purest reaches; all this is enough to make life 
worth living regardless of any hereafter. 
Whether there ever was a yesterday, or whether 
there will be a tomorrow, I am glad and grate- 
ful for the privilege of having been permitted 
to be a reverent spectator of these wonderful 
sights and an humble participant in these great 
experiences and aims. Moreover, concerning 
this question, Is life worth living? it is well 
to remember what Professor Adler has said of 
it in his Religion of Duty. "The question/ ' he 
says, "involves a species of blasphemy. The 
right question to ask is, Am I worthy to live? 
If I am not, I can make myself so, that is always 
in my power. " 

And we may add that just in proportion as 
we earnestly, ardently strive to make ourselves 
worthy to live, to that degree we become con- 
vinced not only that the task is one in which we 
may endlessly progress, but also convinced that 

184 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

the self engaged in such upward endeavor can- 
not cease. "By moving upward," to quote 
again from the same source, "we acquire faith 
in an upward movement without limit, and a 
religion which is to satisfy must be a religion 
of progress." 

4. A word now touching the fourth of the 
false inferences under discussion. It is to the 
effect that immortality cannot be but for those 
whose earthly life has warranted this supreme 
privilege. 

It will be remembered that in the preceding 
chapter special stress was laid upon the unique- 
ness of man in that he has power both to see the 
ideal and to strive for its realization. 

True, the science of zoology warrants the 
classification of man in the animal kingdom. 
Yet we regard him as of a wholly different order 
from all else that is, "in a class" as Mr. W. M. 
Salter says, "apart from planets and crys- 
tals, flowers and trees and all the tribes of ani- 
mals, compelling the belief that he belongs to a 
realm which knows neither dissolution nor de- 
cay." Why should we entertain so exalted a 
conception of man? It is because unlike all 
other creatures he can both see and pursue an 
ideal, see both what he is and what he ought to 

185 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

be and go whither that sacred ought directs. 
'Tis in his capacity for allegiance to imperish- 
able spiritual law that man's distinctive great- 
ness lies. This it is that differentiates him 
from all other members of the animal kingdom 
and makes him alone the object with which 
ethics is concerned. This it is that gives rise 
to the conviction that his essential selfhood, 
which is spiritual, must be as imperishable as 
the spiritual law he reveres. But the question 
instantly arises, are we warranted in inferring 
from this conviction of man's permanence (as 
contrasted with the transiency of all else) the 
immortality of all men indiscriminately? Is it 
conceivable that all human beings will survive 
death? Must not immortality be restricted to 
those who earn it by living up to the distinctive 
attributes of human beings f Or dare we think 
of it as a free gift for all, free by reason of the 
moral nature and its unbounded possibilities, 
common to all mankind? In the best known of 
his religious writings, "Season in Religion,' ' 
Dr. Hedge devoted a chapter to exhibiting the 
Christian conception of immortality as condi- 
tional upon belief or upon character and by no 
means a privilege granted unconditionally to all 
human beings. By appeal to an array of scrip- 

186 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

ture texts the distinguished divine proved that 
the New Testament does not teach universal 
immortality at all but stands exclusively for 
conditional immortality, the author of the 
Fourth Gospel and the Apostle Paul making it 
dependent upon belief, Jesus conditioning it 
upon character. 

Browning, in his " Toccata of Galuppi" raises 
the awful question, what has become of the 
souls of those pleasure-loving Venetians, who 
gave themselves up to sensual delights and are 
now dead? 

As for Venice and her people only born to bloom and 

drop 
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly 

were the crop. 
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had 

to stop? 

Matthew Arnold, in a noble sonnet, contends 
that only the moral life is equal to generating 
that energy of soul which can transport it 
safely across the bridge of death to the life be- 
yond. 

"Will they who failed under the heat of this life's 

day, 
Support the fervors of the heavenly morn ? 
No, No ! the energy of life may be 

187 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

Kept on after the grave but not begun ; 
And be who flagged not in the earthly strife 
From strength to strength advancing — only he 
His soul, well-knit, and all his battles won 
Mounts, and that hardly to eternal life. 

Professor Hickson in a remarkably candid 
and free discussion of " Human Immortality 
and Ethics' ' contributed to the McGill Uni- 
versity Magazine expresses his unqualified 
sympathy with the conditionalists. "Viewing 
the question from an ethical standpoint,' ' he 
says, "surely a general indiscriminate immor- 
tality would seem to be incredible. It would be 
unintelligible how a rational reality to which the 
attribute of goodness is in any comprehensible 
sense ascribable (and if it is not then cadit 
qucEstio) must guarantee the indefinite contin- 
uance of all human beings no matter how stupid 
or unworthy and incapable of change. Indeed 
the belief in immortality seems all the less 
credible when we consider the character of some 
of the believers. Is not the demand for im- 
mortality in some cases preposterous and mor- 
ally indecent, requiring as it does a maximum 
of reward for a minimum of achievement or 
even effort 1 f 7 

Mr. Salter in still stronger terms gives his 
188 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

indorsement to conditionalism. "The current 
doctrine of immortality is weak, it has no moral 
fiber in it. It gives to all that which should 
belong to the valorous and virtuous, it lets 
every driveling saint and damnable sinner be- 
lieve that they are going to live again and live 
forever. There was never such effrontery. If 
souls are worthy of another life we have reason 
to believe there is one, but when frivolous, vain, 
selfish, wicked people end their worthless career 
it would seem the part of piety to let them go 
into eternal forgetfulness. The only thing we 
can believe is that out of the countless mass of 
personalities that have been or shall be born 
on this bank and shoal of time some shall 
be accounted worthy to share eternity with 
the blessed powers that are over all and in 
all." 1 

Dr. McConnell, rector of All Souls ' Episcopal 
Church, New York, entertains the same thought. 
In his book, "The Evolution of Immortality, ' ' 
he adds to the preceding ideas the curious con- 
ception of a "spiritual body" created by the 
good soul during its life on earth and, immedi- 
ately after death, worn as the garment of the 
soul for all eternity. And only the good soul, 

1 W. M. Salter: "Ethical Religion," p. 314. 
189 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

he holds, can generate this spiritual body 
and so become immortal. 

Now there is one strong feature in all these 
conceptions of conditional immortality. They 
infuse a certain moral fiber into the popular 
notion of immortality by making it something 
to be earned rather than something to be had 
for nothing. Yet I am persuaded that on closer 
inspection this doctrine of conditional immor- 
tality will prove less tenable than the view it is 
meant to supplant. 

In the first place, conditional immortality 
does violence to the noblest of all our senti- 
ments — sympathy, tenderness, pity, love. Im- 
mortality for all or for none seems to me a 
much worthier and more acceptable proposi- 
tion than immortality for only the good. 
Surely we want no immortality for ourselves 
unless it also means opportunity for every 
other child of man. 

In contradistinction to Professor Hickson's. 
position we incline to the view that it would be 
unintelligible how a rational reality to which 
the attribute of goodness is ascribable could do 
other than make possible the continuance of the 
stupid and unworthy. Nor can we hold with 
him the notion that any human beings, however 

190 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

degraded, are "incapable of change." With- 
out the postulate of worth in every human soul 
— i. e., value on its own account as distinguished 
from value in relation to other personalities — 
the Ethical Movement could not exist. And we 
ascribe worth to human beings not because of 
what we see in them but because of the latent 
potentialities in them. Consequently we are 
compelled to think that for even the most de- 
moralized, because of a residuum of capacity 
for improvement which they are never without, 
hope must be cherished. With the Buddha, we 
would say, "Never will I accept private indi- 
vidual salvation, never will I enter into final 
peace alone, but in all worlds and forever I will 
strive for the universal redemption of man- 
kind. ,, It is noteworthy that Mr. Salter found 
it impossible to abide by his belief in conditional 
immortality. For, elsewhere in the same book 
from which the passage just quoted was taken, 
we read, "I see in man, in every man somewhat 
of measureless possibilities, of priceless worth, 
that will live, all else he willingly lets die. Man 
is called to be perfect and the way is open 
toward an infinite goal. ' ' We cannot therefore 
look with utter hopelessness on any human soul. 
This is the gospel that Tolstoi brought home 
191 



FAITH IN A FUTUKE LIFE 

to us in his "Besurrection," forcing us to feel 
that just as no soul ever attains a purity beyond 
which it cannot reach, so also no soul ever be- 
comes so soiled and sunken but that it is still 
equal to the task of attaining resurrection. And 
so far as our attitude to the latter class is con- 
cerned, I, for one, feel that we fall short of the 
claim which brotherhood makes upon us if we do 
not prefer immortality for them to immortality 
for the pure, if there cannot be immortality for 
all. If our feeling in the matter rises to the high- 
est, noblest level of which we are capable must 
we not part company with the believers in condi- 
tional immortality and hold that a chance should 
be given those who were conceived in wicked- 
ness, born in sin, reared in a vicious environ- 
ment and thus never knew what the higher life 
implies? Must we not desire immortality for 
those who, though they had chances to know 
the blessedness of temperance and the bliss of 
consecrated service and the ecstasy of loyalty 
to convictions, yet lost each chance as it came 
and so never rose to the level of worthy living ! 
Surely, if there must be annihilation at all we 
would have these souls spared. Let those who 
have known and realized the delights of the 
higher life, who have tasted and seen the in- 

192 



THE MISUSES OF FAITH 

comparable glory of incorruptible manhood and 
womanhood, let them suffer annihilation, if 
need be, but save the wicked ones of every grade 
and shade, if so they may come to know, in the 
course of eternity, something of the incompa- 
rable, ineffable joys of the moral and spiritual 
life. 



X 



THE MORAL LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF 
IMMORTALITY 

We come now to the question presented for 
our final chapter : What is meant by the ethics 
of an immortal being, what should the ethics of 
personal life be for one who believes in immor- 
tality as an ethical necessity? What relation 
should his belief bear to his daily conduct? 
What specific duties would devolve on one who 
held the faith in a future life from this highest 
standpoint f The author of the New Testament 
epistle to the Ephesians, discussing the here- 
after, concludes a noble passage with the clause : 
"And every one who hath this hope [of immor- 
tality] will purify himself.' ' In this sentence 
I read an epitome of the ethics of personal life 
for an immortal soul. The word " purify* ' 
sums it all up. Let me then state some of the 
ways in which every one who has this hope may 
"purify himself,' ' some of the respects in which 
life here is intimately related to and governed 

194 



IMMORTALITY 

by the belief in life hereafter. Let me touch on 
three or four of the practical effects which that 
belief should have on the everyday life of every- 
one who cherishes it. 

In the first place, then, I should say that such 
a being ought to plan his whole life like an im- 
mortal being and not like a temporary being. 
That is to say, he should pay special attention 
to those things that seem to him to have perma- 
nent value, train himself in all those interests 
that seem to have permanent worth, cultivate 
in himself all those powers which he believes 
will be permanently serviceable. Especially 
should such an one distinguish carefully and 
constantly between the things of time and the 
things of eternity. In the former class belong, 
among other things, wealth, fame, personal 
pleasure, social position and power — things that 
perish with the using ; in the latter class belong 
knowledge, wisdom, love, will power — things 
that increase with the using. Very carefully and 
constantly should this immortal soul observe 
the distinction between those things of time and 
these of eternity, for the sovereign aim of his 
life will be to develop the imperishable portion 
of his personality. 

Secondly, he will take a worthy and inspiring 
195 



FAITH IN A FUTUKE LIFE 

attitude toward the failures in his life, toward 
the trials and the tribulations that cross every 
human path. If, for example, the circum- 
stances of his life are particularly hard and try- 
ing, he will remember that it is not the circum- 
stances, nor the conditions, but the way in 
which he takes them and what he makes out of 
them that counts. Will they be hindrances or 
helps, stumblingblocks or stepping-stones to 
higher things? That is the paramount ques- 
tion. If he be poor he will remember that the 
man is more than the means of livelihood ; that 
the best things in this world are not the mo- 
nopoly of the rich. Nay, more, he will remem- 
ber, too, that the successful life is the life true 
to its own highest ideals, let the results be what 
they may. 

What I aspired to be, and was not, 
Comforts me, — a brute I might have been, 
But would not sink i' the scale. 

Above all, he will remember that this world 
is only a primary school and that the important 
thing is, not a cushioned seat in the school- 
house, nor a morocco bound textbook, nor a 
costly school suit, but to get his lessons and be 
ready to graduate. Should any pet project fail 

196 



IMMOETALITY 

of completion, he will not thereupon grow sullen 
or morose. He knows he has put conscience 
and consecration into the work, knows he has 
used his immortal powers with intelligence and 
devotion, consequently he can face the seeming 
failure with a degree of equanimity and com- 
posure of mind and heart hardly possible to one 
who regards himself as merely a temporary 
being. In the face of any such unfulfilled 
power an immortal being will feel that he may 
rightly put the responsibility for a successful 
issue on some higher power. For his own sov- 
ereign aim gives him the key to successful life — 
which is so to live, so to use his immortal pow- 
ers that the responsibility for a successful issue 
is shifted from him to a higher power. 

He will rightly feel, as he contemplates the 
apparent failure of his project, * ' 'tis better to 
have failed in the high aim, than vulgarly to 
have succeeded in the low." Hence at the core 
of his being there will abide a serenity, a calm 
and deep peace that enhance immeasurably the 
worth of his daily life. 

And now I come to a third mode of self -puri- 
fying, one which an immortal soul will value as 
of exceptional account. I mean the reserving 
of moments each week or, better still, out of 

197 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

each day, for self-examination and self-collect- 
ing, because in the haste and press of our daily 
life, especially in the modern world, the su- 
preme and sovereign aim of an immortal soul is 
apt to become obscured. Consequently he needs 
occasional solitude in which he can be a specta- 
tor of himself, of his aims and purposes, to see 
how it stands with him and the sacred facts of 
truth and right, to see whether perchance he is 
losing or gaining in the inward life — solitude 
in which he can ask : Is my thought-power more 
strong, do I meet pain with more bravery and 
serenity, do I control my temper and passions 
more successfully, am I more devoted to hu- 
manitarian ends 1 How else shall he be certain 
that he is progressing and not retrogressing 
save as he thus takes an inventory of his spir- 
itual stock? Indeed, we may go so far as to 
say that only he who does thus review and ap- 
praise his life can be actually progressive. 

And then, as the innermost experience of all 
— one of which, perhaps, he can never speak to 
a single soul because of its very interiorness — 
he will turn his thought to that deeper life in 
which he feels his own life embedded, he will 
turn his thought to that infinite Purpose with 
which he would put his own finite purposes in 

198 



IMMORTALITY 

tune. In the sacred hush of that spiritual sol- 
itude he will steep his conscience in the eternal 
Right, and renerve his own finite will by contact 
with the eternal Will. 

Once more, an immortal soul, one who accepts 
personal immortality as an ethical necessity — 
will make the memory of the dear departed ones 
an inspiration, a second conscience as it were, 
avoiding everything that could not bear the 
light of those dear eyes that were closed in 
death. Too often does it happen that people 
who regard themselves as immortal souls act 
in times of loss and bereavement as though they 
were only temporary beings. We see it illus- 
trated in the case of the young woman who had 
lost one very dear to her. At once the world 
became to her cold, cheerless, poor ; her own life 
empty, desolate, wretched in the extreme. Who 
does not sympathize with one thus bereft and 
feel that very ache and pang of her heart is 
natural, inevitable, justified? But now, be- 
neath the crushing weight of her bereavement 
she succumbs to the temptation to nurse her 
grief and brood over her loss. Is that justifi- 
able? Has an immortal soul any right to let 
grief take out the strength and sweet usefulness 
from her life? Assuredly not, because the sov- 

199 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

ereign aim of an immortal soul is to make the 
fullest possible use of all the higher powers, 
those most likely to be serviceable when the 
earthly life has ended. Life here in the light of 
life hereafter forbids loss of poise and paraly- 
sis of will power. No loss, no sorrow, however 
exceptional it seems, can ever exonerate an im- 
mortal soul from the duty of keeping the power 
to think, to will, to love, to help, in the best con- 
dition possible. As an illustration of this 
point, I cite the case of Fanny Kemble, the Eng- 
lish actress, who lost her devoted husband and 
soon after his death wrote an exquisite poem, 
the burden of which is the inspiration afforded 
her by the memory of her beloved dead, making 
of it a second conscience that pronounced upon 
the worth or unworth of whatever she under- 
took. 

What shall I do with all the days and hours 
That must be counted ere I see thy face ? 

How shall I charm the interval that lowers 

Between this time and that sweet time of grace ? 

I '11 tell thee : For thy sake, I will lay hold 
Of all good aims, and consecrate to thee, 

In worthy deeds, each moment that is told, 
"While thou, beloved, art far from me. 

200 



IMMORTALITY 

For thee, I will arouse my thoughts to try- 
All heavenward flights, all high and holy strains ; 

For thy dear sake, I will walk patiently 

Through these long hours, nor call their minutes 
pains. 

I will this weary blank of absence make 
A noble task time, and will therein strive 

To follow excellence, and to o 'ertake 
More good than I have won since yet I live. 

So may this darksome time build up in me 
A thousand graces which shall thus be thine ; 

So may my love and longing hallowed be, 
And thy dear thought an influence divine. 

So, too, it was with Lucy Smith in that won- 
derful story of her life with William, as told by 
George Merriam. How unspeakable was the 
loss she sustained when death removed her hus- 
band from her side ! What should she do with 
all the days and weeks till she should see his 
face? Brood over her loss, indulge her grief? 
Nay, but lay firm hold on all nobler things, 
strive to prove herself worthier of his love, 
transfigure her sorrow by making it minister to 
soul development. 

So, again, it was with Tennyson when death 
claimed Arthur Hallam, "the friend he held as 
half divine. ' ' In that immortal elegy and eulogy 

201 



FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE 

— if so we may speak of "In Memoriam" — Ten- 
nyson tells us that at first his sorrow was a 
"cruel fellowship," shutting him out from as- 
sociation with others, but gradually the sorrow 
"deepened down," and as it did so it kindled 
anew the memory of the departed friend as an 
inspiration in life, and soon thereafter he goes 
out into the great world of sympathy and serv- 
ice and even takes into his life a new friendship, 
which seemed to him, ten years before, abso- 
lutely impossible. Dante, during the decade 
following the death of Beatrice, wrote: 
"Whensoever she appeared to me in a vision, 
the flame of charity kindled within me, caused 
me to forgive all who had ever offended me." 

Such are some of the ways in which every one 
who holds the immortal hope will purify him- 
self — some of the ways in which one will con- 
duct his or her life, who accepts personal im- 
mortality as an ethical necessity. 

Speaking for myself — and, as I have already 
said, I have no right on this platform to speak 
for anyone else — I believe that just as we all 
came out of the Universal Life, so back to that 
Universal Life must we all go ; not, however, by 
the extinction of our essential selfhood, but by 
its ever fuller development. 

202 



IMMORTALITY 

And even though no such personal consum- 
mation await us we yet may hold, with Emerson, 
" Whatever it be that the great Providence has 
in store for us when we die, it must be something 
large and generous and in the great style of 
Nature's works.' ' 



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